Idea Repository
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: A place to stash various plot ideas I don't have the time or motivation to pursue, in case anyone wants to adopt them. In this chapter: a talk or two with Trelawney.
1. Geneforge Crossover

**Author's Note:** I have several ideas and neither the free time nor the motivation to write them. Though I reserve the ability to continue my own ideas if I get such opportunity, I'm posting them here for perusal and/or adoption.

If anyone wants to take on any of the ideas posted, **credit me in an author's note at the start of the fic.**

(This isn't listed in the crossover section because _most_ ideas won't be crossovers, although the first one definitely is.)

* * *

 **[Harry the Shaper]**

 **Disclaimer:** Harry Potter belongs to JKR; the Geneforge series belongs to Spiderweb Software.

 **Spoilers for Geneforge I & II follow.**

* * *

At the edge of civilization, It seethed.

Long had It reigned - so long that It had forgotten Its own name and original sex. But such things were the trappings of mortals. After Shaping upon Shaping, It could not be said to be a mortal any longer. It was, in truth, a living god.

But even gods could die.

Somehow, It had not pillaged the entirety of Sucia Isle. The half-witted investigators sent by the jelly-minded Shaper Council had recovered enough information to begin the work anew - to create a new Geneforge!

The news had, for the first time since Its rebirth, sent a spike of fear straight through Its heart. Though those events seemed like another life, It remembered how It had once been a feeble, half-drowned apprentice, washed up on Sucia's forgotten shores... weak, ignorant, barely able to Shape... fleeing every rogue Creation It saw, sneaking about like the lowest of Serviles... and then It had found the Canisters... those glowing, churning, acid-green containers, which, though It had not known it then, contained the merest fraction of the power of the true Geneforge... and everything changed... everything changed...

If the secrets of that island, the sealed pinnacle of Shaper achievement, had so uplifted a mere sniveling apprentice, what might they do for a master Shaper?

But It soon learned Its fears were unfounded: the new Geneforges, though they awed the childlike folk of the continent, were the merest eidolon of Sucia's - barely worthy of the title: more glorified Canisters, in Its judgment. Good for a Shaper civil war, but not much else. Content, It settled back in Its self-forged kingdom and dedicated Itself to pushing the boundaries of Shaping beyond what any quavering Council-approved Shapers had ever dared, free from the petty concerns of mortals.

And so It wasted Its time, ignorant of the true threat: the Drakons.

Why! Why! Why?! Drayks were enough trouble as they were: who had thought of using the power of a Geneforge, be it ever so inferior, to _enhance_ the things?! Moreover, to allow them to _Shape_? Yes! By all means! Give a Creation not only human-level intellect, a greedy and independent temperament, and a powerful reptilian body, _but also_ the power to Shape! Whatever could go wrong? Why ever not? What were the chances that such beings, realizing they had all the gifts of humankind and more, _might decide they no longer needed their masters?_

Quite high, as the rogue Shapers would discover! Extraordinarily so! So much so that the _human_ rogues soon found themselves little more than Serviles for the Drakons! _Why._ How _stupid_ could anyone be? The temperament-adjusting effects of the Canisters (which were really quite mild, but It supposed they could have a greater effect upon the weak) could not suffice to explain a tenth of the insanity behind such a decision.

Faced with a superior foe, the Shaper Council was forced to allow wartime innovation; the Drakons responded in kind. And, as the escalating, expanding arms race writhed across the continent, even It was drawn into the edges of the conflict.

It did not wish to participate; It remained on the fringes, and made no overtures to either side. But Its domain was seen as a potential source of resources, and captured infiltrators confessed, under Vlish interrogation, that their masters hoped to extract the secrets of the true Geneforge from Its corpse. It flew into a rage, launching random raids against nearby Shaper and Rebel encampments alike, but It was but one, however godlike; Its forces were beaten back from Rebel and Shaper strongholds, albeit with heavy losses.

Worse, It soon realized that the arms race was outpacing It by far. Its superhuman intelligence was not equal to the finest Shapers and Drakons slaving away day and night in search of an innovation that might decisively end the war; in comparison, Its Creations were either outdated or eccentric, not flawlessly optimized for war. And always the threat loomed that the Drakons might, in a flash of brilliance, make the leap from their pitiful imitations to a true Geneforge.

Raging against Its increasing impotence, It turned Its gaze afar, seeking a solution outside of the realms of Shaping. It had toyed with magic in the past, then tossed that aside to resume Its pursuit of Shaping; now, outpaced in that pursuit, It looked to magic for answers.

With Its accelerated intelligence, learning came easily; it soon ventured into fronts that, so far as it could tell, neither the Shaper Council nor the Drayks had dared to explore. With great effort, and the sacrifice of many creations, It was able to tear the very fabric of space, and open a portal - but one, to Its disgust, It soon found could not transmit matter.

With difficulty, however, It could transfer magic across the rift, and, with the knowledge of Sucia Isle, go so far as to rewrite the little scrolls within the beings upon which It focused - the scrolls which, the forbidden research had revealed, controlled the very composition of living beings. And that might be sufficient, might it not? After all, the Canisters held the power to transfer knowledge through extensive overwriting of the scrolls... Surely It could copy Its thoughts, memories, and abilities onto a fresh host with sufficient rewriting, and so, even if this form died, It would persist...

But experimentation was slow, and the borders of Its domain receded. Maddeningly, making alterations across the portal was arduous and prone to mistakes, and those upon whom It experimented often perished. Worse yet, the rift seemed to be to some defective world in which magical power was pathetically rare, and those without magic often reacted quite poorly to alterations granting magically-based abilities. Spontaneous combustion was frustratingly common. Magical humans were not much better; flailing half-blind as It was, It often had... interesting effects on their physiologies. Even worse, their natural magic would rally to their defense and attempt to repair Its changes!

As time ran short, It focused on a particularly durable specimen: a young boy, less than ten years of age, affected by some sort of magical condition that rendered him extremely difficult to kill. Whenever he fell prey to a fatal alteration, a strange enchantment embedded in his forehead would flow throughout his body and act as life support, albeit apparently of an unpleasant sort, until It could undo Its error. Even better, his guardians maltreated him, so that his physiological reserves were often quite drained, and his magic had not the room to fight back against Its alterations!

Yes, yes - he would make a good target. If only It had more time!

But the Drakons had advanced horribly, creating some sort of abomination called the Unbound - and the Shapers had surged forth in answer. There was no _room_ for neutrality any longer. Geneforges dotted the land, and not all of them shameful imitations. Once, It had been a living god - and now - and now -

And now It was something to be devoured by greater monsters.

In mortal terror, It threw Itself whole-heartedly into the project. It no longer attempted to defend Its domain's borders; the Creations It sent out existed solely to slow the flood - what little good they did. It spent all Its time before the portal, perfecting Its technique upon the boy and loading into his feeble form all the secrets of Sucia Isle.

It would not die! It could not die! They could not kill It, these pathetic, hateful _upstarts!_ It - It -

* * *

In his cupboard, Harry Potter, the sickest boy alive, awoke from a particularly troubled slumber.

For years, he had fallen prey to about every ailment possible: his skin sloughing off, his lungs filling with blood, his eardrums bursting, his brain ceasing to function for three days straight, his intestines doing unmentionable things, his skeleton crumbling like chalk...

Honestly, he well-understood why his relatives called him a freak. He assuredly was, for somehow he went through all of that and _survived_. (Not that he could always say he wanted to.) Even more, he always recovered from the condition of the month and came back stronger - only to fall prey to another ailment in short order.

He didn't even _understand_ how one could come down with spontaneous combustion. He had done that. Multiple times. His relatives had seemed oddly unsurprised, but never bothered to explain the exact mechanism to him - just screamed at him more than usual and kept the fire extinguisher ready at all times.

He now, however, found himself in the strangest condition of all:

He _wasn't_ sick. In fact, he felt _amazing_.

Not only that, but his mind raced with new information. It was as though he'd managed to not only make up for every single day of school he'd missed due to illness, but somehow managed to go to university in the meantime. A very strange university indeed, mind - one that had taught him about magic, which his relatives had often assured him wasn't real, and some bizarrely advanced form of biology - mad science, more like - known as Shaping.

But if magic didn't work, how did that spell of Unlock, in which his newfound knowledge had instructed him, work? (He had not tested Firebolt and, due to memories of spontaneous combustion, was not eager to try.) Speed or War Blessing, he could explain as psychological effects - but the latch on his cupboard door didn't open itself for _psychosomatic_ reasons.

For all that he knew he should have been amazed by that, his new instincts told him _Shaping_ was the greatest power of all. And, though he hadn't had much opportunity to explore it, he somehow knew he would not be receiving any more gifts from whatever freakish twist of fate had, in the past few weeks, turned him from unnaturally unwell to indecently healthy.

From now on, he was on his own. And any more information he wanted, he'd have to gather on his own.

He sat up in his cot, thinking, and absently brushed a spider off his leg. It was a pity they were too small to effectively Shape - he had an abundance of them.

Maybe he could get his hands on a garden snake soon, though. They would probably make the best basis for an Artila...

He should probably omit the part about spitting acid, though - at least at first. He could see a lot of ways that could go wrong.

* * *

 **For those who have not played Geneforge** : Shaping is, more or less, magically altering existing organisms (implied to be a difficult and lengthy process) and raising new Creations from "Essence" using the recipes passed down from on high (much simpler). Or that's what it _should_ be.

The Shaper researchers on the colony of Sucia Isle, through much laborious effort, learned to _directly alter DNA_. Moreover, they discovered how to pass on Shaper knowledge and magic, ordinarily the product of many years of study and hard work, by writing it directly to the target's genome, and mass-produced Canisters containing green goo that would automatically do just that. Excessive Canister use _did_ have mild side effects, such as impaired social skills, decreased impulse control, violent behavior, megalomania, and glowing in the dark, but that's science.

Sadly the Shaper Council didn't quite agree, and the program was shut down, the island was Barred from ever being visited again, and everything was hastily abandoned in place. Including the titular Geneforge - a sort of Canister to end all Canisters, massively empowering the user in every way imaginable.

It also will turn you into a screaming mass of undifferentiated tissue for the three seemingly-everlasting seconds before you die if you use it without proper preparations, but that's science.

Unfortunately for everyone, a no-name apprentice manages to get shipwrecked on Sucia, kicking off Geneforge I. Depending on your ending, the apprentice will either manage to leave the island and notify the Council of what they witnessed like a good Shaper (causing the Council to actually do a serious clean-up job this time), or, having used the Geneforge, _attempt_ to do so, fly into a psychotic rage and butcher the Shapers who were attempting to restrain the raving lunatic, and head off into the wilderness to go play at godhood. (The Council retraces your steps, realizes what happened, and does a serious clean-up job this time.) You may guess that the narrator for this idea... had the latter ending.

In Geneforge II, it turned up that the Shapers doing clean-up decided to huff a few Canisters out of curiosity and promptly decided Canisters weren't a bad thing, the Geneforge would probably be even better if they had one, and the absolute best thing they could do with their time was to head off into the mountains and try to make a new one.

It didn't work out well. Who ever could have guessed brewing CRISPR-Cas9 moonshine might be bad for your mind, your body, and the continued integrity of your cellular structure?

 **[Harry the Shaper] Summary** **:** The Geneforge I protagonist (Use The Geneforge ending) has degenerated into a ranting megalomaniac with superpowers, but superpowers that are rapidly being obsoleted by the Geneforge II+ arms race. In desperation, it turns to magic and opens a portal to the Harry Potter universe, but can't transfer itself over. It instead engages in haphazard genetic experimentation upon the inhabitants of that Earth, managing to kill numerous Muggles and wizards alike in horrible ways and probably leaving multiple survivors crippled for life.

It manages to zero in on Harry because his status as a Horcrux prevents him from outright dying unless " _put beyond magical repair_ ", then tampers with his physiology in various abominable ways until it gets it right and can begin copying over knowledge and abilities. Unfortunately for it, it can't copy its personality and personal memories onto him quite in time...

Thus Harry, having gotten a life of unending misfortune out of the way early, finds himself with a newly-strengthened body, an array of basic spells, and a Shaper's power and knowledge. Just about in time for Hogwarts.

If anyone wants to adopt this, wholly up to author's discretion whether Harry's empowerment corresponds to an extremely nerfed version of Geneforge usage (basic Shaper Harry, slightly stronger, smarter, and speedier than the average boy), the full-blown version (Super!Harry, expert Shaper, super-strong, super-smart, and super-speedy), or anything in-between. Also up to author's discretion whether his unusual empowerment left him with Canister-junkie symptoms or not.


	2. Harry Meets (Dark) Phoenix

**Author's Note** : A possible start for a "Godlike!Harry". Brief X-Men crossover, but none after this intro.

###

As the basilisk venom burned through his veins, Harry's eyes fell closed, and darkness took him.

And then his vision exploded in light.

Stunned, he shielded his eyes against it, but the gesture did nothing to ward off the brilliance; after a moment, it dimmed, and he could see again. Well, what there was to see.

An infinite white expanse surrounded him, with no features to be seen. He looked down, but there wasn't any ground either. Perhaps he was only standing on something solid because he _thought_ he was.

"Am I... dead?" he wondered aloud.

The he yelled and stepped back as an enormous flame appeared before him. Despite its intensity, though, he felt no heat; after a moment, it formed the shape of an immense bird, then coalesced into a woman.

He stared in awe as she stepped toward him. She looked like a Greek goddess, with her tall, athletic body, sculpted features, and cascading mane of red curls; a bodysuit in Gryffindor colors clung to her form, the golden bird emblazoned on her chest seeming to shine with an inner light. A smile curved her lips as she looked down upon him, that single gaze conveying more pride and affection than he'd ever experienced in his life.

But her face was the most stunning thing about her, for it had previously smiled at him only from Hagrid's photo album.

"M-Mum?" he asked, his voice shaking as he took a step toward her.

"Not precisely," she said, and his heart plummeted. "But you _are_ my son, in a way."

"What? I - I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"There are many worlds, Harry," she said, placing a golden-gloved hand on his shoulder. "Some of them have no magic at all. Some of them have magic unlike anything you've ever seen. Some of them have technology so advanced it might as _well_ be magic. Your mother _was_ my counterpart in your world... though she never unlocked my power." An edge of cruelty came into her smile.

"Your power?"

Her smile grew, and the light all around him dimmed until they stood in darkness. " ** _Hear me, child_**. **_No longer_** am I the woman you _**knew,**_ " she intoned, and a great flame expanded out from her body, engulfing him and her both. "I am **_fire_**. And _**life incarnate.**_ " The words were no longer just speech; they seemed to reverberate through his very soul. "Now and forever - **I am** ** _PHOENIX!_** "

He cried out as the whole world exploded into flame. The heat overwhelmed him, and yet he did not burn; the light scorched his eyes, and yet he could still see. After what seemed like an eternity, he found himself becoming able to bear the all-encompassing sensation - indeed, some part of him told him he could no longer live without it.

"What is this?" he breathed, looking all around him at the inferno that was like the heart of a star. She chuckled.

"This is my power," she told him. "As best you can comprehend it." She chuckled again. "The immortality and apotheosis of which your world's countless Dark Lords have dared to dream - I attained it." Spreading her arms wide, she pronounced, "And far more."

The flame faded, and they stood as giants against a landscape of utter darkness studded with countless stars. With one dainty hand, she reached out and plucked a star from the firmament, then raised it to her lips and bit into it. Like a berry squirting out its juices, it flared briefly, and was gone. "Would you care to have one, my dear boy?" she asked, taking another one and offering it to him.

He craved the loving indulgence in her words more than all the stars in the sky. "Er - no thanks," he said, staring at it. He could see a few little dark spots on it, and arcs and bursts on its surface; it looked just like the pictures he'd seen in his Muggle textbooks, before he'd gone off to the Wizarding world. "If-" Words briefly forsook him, but he managed, "If - um - that's a real star, I think it might be a little hot for me."

She laughed, but there was no meanness in it. "Oh, child." She put the star back and tousled his hair. "You are still so _young_."

For a moment, he wanted to insist to her that he was nearly thirteen, but having a mum - or an alternate version of his mum - to coo over his youth was such a novel experience that he didn't dare disrupt it. "Was... was that a real star?" he asked, staring at the starscape around them. He could maybe just barely see planets - if he really squinted.

"I am no mean provincial god," she said with a smirk. "The universe is vast, child. When I speak of apotheosis, I do not refer to becoming a chieftain of some meager speck of dust, thinking myself great only because I lack the vision to see the vaster realm beyond." She raised an eyebrow. "On that note, would you like to be rid of the need for your glasses?"

He gawped at her. At some level, he'd taken the scene around him as all some great metaphor; it had not occurred to him that a self-professed goddess could - actually _do_ anything for him. "Yes - yes, please!" he said eagerly.

A moment later, his vision blurred oddly, and he realized in another instant that it was because he still had his glasses on. When he removed them, he found his sight sharper than it ever had been. "My G- Thank you!" he blurted out. "Thank you so much!"

She laughed. "It's the least of what I can do for you, my dear boy." Leaning down, she conspiratorially whispered in his ear, "Would you like me to fix your world for you?"

"I - um - I'm so sorry," he said in confusion. "I don't understand."

"I could kill all your enemies for you in an instant," she said, in the same tone Hermione might use in offering to fetch him another quill if his snapped. "Give you power beyond your wildest dreams. Open the way to the stars for you, if such a little thing should entertain you. Construct a nation - or a planet - entirely populated with beings that worshiped you. Anything you like, child. I am not a kind goddess - but I am fond of my children, from whatever world they may be."

His mind briefly stopped working. _Anything?_ This - this had to be a joke. He -

He opened his mouth, then shut it and was thoughtful. The image of a bloated blond bully crossed his mind. "I - I don't know," he said at last. "I - I've seen what getting anything you ever want, all the time, does to a person. I'd - prefer to fight my own battles, I think."

She smiled at him as though he'd passed some sort of test, and his heart leapt. "That is just the response I would expect from a child of mine."

Then her hand touched his forehead, as though in benediction. He looked up at her curiously. "However - forgive an indulgent mother." _Always_ , he wanted to say, but his throat closed up and wouldn't let him speak. "For the trials you will face, I think you'd benefit from... a little gift. The merest fragment of my power."

Warmth, such as he'd never felt, filled his body, surging through his veins and encompassing his very core. Then came a burst of dazzling radiance, but this time, he realized, it came from _within_. "Farewell, Harry," she said as all things faded from view. "I daresay you're far more prepared to fight your battles now, my child."

"Wait!" he shouted as the light swallowed everything. "Will I see you again?"

"Oh," came the faintest of whispers, "achieve your full potential, and I believe..."

 _Yes_ , a final feeling breathed across his skin, and he opened his eyes.

He was back in the physical world again. Fawkes was nowhere to be seen, but now the entire Chamber was illuminated in red and gold, as though by some great flame. Standing, he happened to realize that flame was _him_ , and he smiled.

Tom Riddle's shade stared at him in mortal terror.

" ** _Hear me, Riddle,_** " he intoned, striding forward. " ** _No longer_** am I the boy you **_knew..._** "

###

 **Author's Note** : So yeah - now and forever, Harry is (this dimension's) Phoenix. Or incarnation of the Phoenix Force, if you prefer the mass of bizarre retcons that go back and forth on whether Jean Grey is Phoenix, an avatar of the Phoenix Force, _the_ avatar of the Phoenix Force, etc. My intent here, however, is that the Phoenix speaking to Harry here _is_ a version of Jean Grey who _was_ Phoenix, and then Dark Phoenix... and - to quote Uatu the Watcher - " _when faced with a choice between keeping her god-like power - knowing she would then wreak death and destruction upon the stars - and dying herself_ "... chose the former. Asking what became of her universe of origin... is ill-advised.


	3. Venom-Narcissa (and Symbiote-Harry)

**Author's Note** : This is an aborted beginning to an answer to Whitetigerwolf's Symbiote Harry challenge. More notes at the end.

 **Content warning** : Abuse, violence, dead Death Eater.

* * *

Narcissa wondered whether she might be dying.

She wondered whether she cared. Perhaps that was the bitterest thing of all.

If only Lucius would limit himself to the Cruciatus, she would have no physical injury - whatever the mental harm. But he liked to humiliate her in - Muggle ways as well. He denied her also the use of her wand, so that she could not heal herself from whatever he inflicted. To so demean the daughter of one of England's greatest Houses, rendering her little more than a Muggle captive for his amusement, gave him enormous pleasure.

The only consolation she had, these days, was that Draco had his arrogance but not the stomach for similar cruelty. Perhaps there was hope for the next generation.

For _she_ was lost. Even if she could get her wand, her marriage contract forbade her from harming him. He'd taunted her with that, back in the early days when she still had some fire. It hadn't been so bad as it was now. As she grew more resigned and less responsive to his torments, he'd devised new ones to get the same thrill.

He'd always used _some_ caution, however, until the _old_ guard got back together. Yes, the Death Eaters had arisen once more. Rumors even said their Lord might be returning; Narcissa neither knew nor cared. The Wizarding government was so corrupt that they scarcely needed him to avoid the repercussions of their misdeeds, and Dumbledore was a senile old fool. He'd lost Harry Potter, for Merlin's sake. How did one lose Harry Potter? Even after near to a decade, he had no idea whether the boy was alive or dead...

Not that it mattered to her. She breathed in and out shallowly, trying to make the pain less. Lucius had been in a temper when he'd come back this last time, furious over Amelia Bones's attempts to hold back the tide, and... it had been... memorable. He'd told her, this time, that he didn't care whether she died. He had no use for a dried-up old hag, and some of his friends had young, fresh daughters that could give him strong sons - not just one feeble boy who lacked the spine for bloodsport.

Never mind that she was a young woman by Wizarding standards, and it was Lucius who had only sired one child in his life, despite all his whoring on the side; Lucius would never accept that it was _his_ seed that was inbred and feeble, and he liked them _young_. Quite honestly, if Narcissa had more energy left in her, she'd want to stay alive for the sake of his prospective next wife. It might give the poor girl, whomever she might be, a chance to complete her OWLs before being sentenced to life as Lucius's brood-mare.

Hope had left her long ago, however, and she seriously debated whether she wanted to continue clinging to life. She _could not_ endure another century of being married to this monster - and she could _easily_ reach that in a Wizarding lifespan, provided no unnatural causes brought about an early demise. Thus either her life would give out before then, or her sanity would. Some fragment of pride preferred it to be her life.

What other option did she have? The contract was ironclad: she could not flee, she could not divorce, she could not disobey, and she certainly could not _attack_ him, much as she'd like that...

As she stared bleakly into the shadows of the desolate room, she noticed that one of them was _lengthening_.

At first, she thought it must have been her imagination. Her vision was hazy and her head was unwell; perhaps it was a trick of the eye.

Then it extended a long, wavering tendril. Not her imagination, then.

Well, what was it? Narcissa had neither the strength nor the motivation to flee as the shadow oozed towards her. Some Death Eater experiment that had escaped? Some novel execution method Lucius had devised? She watched with woozy interest as it crept closer. More tendrils spread out from its amorphous form, seeming to sniff the air. One prodded her damaged hand, then flattened itself out upon the broken flesh.

She instinctively flinched, but the flinch hurt more than the contact. The thing soaked down _into_ her skin, a warm, comforting sensation spreading with it, and soon encased her whole hand. She could feel the broken flesh knitting itself together.

"What is..."

Trailing off, she watched as it flowed up her arm, wrapping itself around the flesh like a skintight fabric. Everywhere it touched, she could feel it healing her... strengthening her...

And feeding off of her magic as well, she noticed. Well, if it intended to leave her dead or a powerless Squib, it was certainly going about it in a strange fashion - no mere parasite would bother healing its host. No, she rather thought that, however it drained her - whatever it did to her - she would still have _some_ magic.

Thus she was content to watch, fascinated, as it slithered over her body. When it reached her torso, she was treated to a host of grinding, miserable, revolting sensations - a few of which were recognizable as her broken ribs being set back into place. Others, she could guess in retrospect, were from it similarly repairing damaged internal organs. At that instant, though, she could only let out a shriek of pain.

As the horrid sensations faded, she lay on the ground, panting - having the _energy_ to pant, and being _able_ to pant without crying in pain. A soothing pulse went through her as the black substance covered her body, as though this creature were trying to reassure her. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in years.

She startled as the creature extended over her mouth, but discovered a moment later that it permitted air to pass freely. When it covered her eyes, she had a few moments of utter darkness, but it soon gave way to translucent patches, allowing her to see. Really, she had to wonder if it was _designed_ to serve - could any natural creature be so accommodating?

First came a sensation like fear, then hummed agreement. _Yes,_ she thought it might be saying. _Serve. Wish to serve_.

Narcissa stood - when, a scant few minutes ago, she would have been in barely any state to crawl - and looked down at herself. The creature clung to her like a second skin, pitch-black and smoother than silk.

But more than that was the _strength_ she felt through it. She clenched a fist and drove it into a wall.

The fist went straight through, and the impact barely hurt. Surprised, she drew back her hand and inspected it; it did not even look scuffed. Well, of course. It was a magical creature, not truly _clothing_.

Going to one corner of the room, she sprang towards the other, and found herself there so quickly that her arms barely came up in time to keep her from smashing headfirst into the wall. Perhaps they had a little assistance. She looked down at herself, then, for the first time in a long while, slowly, genuinely _smiled_.

Then came the familiar pounding of footsteps, and her gaze snapped towards the door - one that locked from the outside, as did most of the doors in Malfoy Manor. "Just what do you think you're doing?" roared Lucius. "How dare do you make that awful racket?"

Ordinarily, if she'd made any sound, she would be the first to fall into mechanical humility and promises of future compliance. Now, however, she merely stood and watched with contemptuous eyes, flexing her coated fingers and wondering whether there might be _some_ out to that benighted contract after all. It was difficult to feel pitiful and helpless with this creature surrounding her - _embracing_ her -

The door flew open a moment later, and contemplation ended. Lucius recoiled when he saw her _new_ self. "What have you done? What -" Then the Death Eater in him overcame any hesitation he might have felt. " _Bitch!_ "

The sickly-purple bolt that flew towards her _should_ have been impossible to dodge.

Which was why she was as surprised as Lucius when her dive to the side left it flying past her with inches to spare. Not one to hesitate, however, she lunged for him as he gawked. Sheer inertia carried her onto him and sent him sprawling to the floor, but she felt the magic of the contract tightening around her throat and arms like iron bands when she attempted to close her hands around his neck. A scream of horror and rage echoed inside her skull. So _close_ , so _close_ -

And the creature finished the job for her.

She watched in shock as tendrils lashed out from her clawed hands and assaulted Lucius's face and neck. Though his own magic tried to fight it off - and never before had she seen accidental magic from a grown man - the black tentacles relentlessly bore down upon him, even as he screamed and battered at them with his hands. For her own part, holding him down was easy with her newly-enhanced strength.

And, when the creature secured a good hold on him, the struggling stopped very quickly. Its treatment of _him_ was nowhere near as kind as its treatment of her: the two were as light and darkness. Blood pooled around his head as muffled screams came from beneath the black mass; the more blood, the weaker the screams. Where the mass separated from flesh, the sight made Narcissa gag. That was only a physical reaction, however - For the man himself, she had no pity.

If his treatment of _her_ had not been enough, his actions toward his _other_ victims would have been.

When the screams stopped and the body went slack, she rolled off of him and watched as the creature feasted. Yes, she thought distantly, hugging one knee to her chest as she observed how the blood ruined Lucius's precious rugs, existence _was_ more pleasant without the contract binding her. It was as though... well, rather as though a large black mass had been weighing down upon her upper body.

She averted her eyes as the creature continued to gorge itself upon her late husband's carcass. She had not really needed to know how little of Lucius's upper body was left.

Whatever this creature was, she owed it her life - a life worth living, at any rate. She wondered what it might want.

It stopped briefly. Again, she felt the humming sensation that, perhaps, might have meant _to serve_.

Very well and good. She would prefer more details, however. Temperature ranges? Ideal humidity? Dietary preferences? Obtaining more Death Eaters on short notice might be a bit inconvenient, but she would see what she could do. Whatever its likes and dislikes, she owed it -

It stopped again, and this time it stilled for over a minute. At length, she felt more complex impressions from it, though the effort seemed to be a drain on its energy - shortly replenished from her own magic.

Vaguely, the image of a howling, hate-filled monster swam into her mind - one that menaced a huddled, helpless figure. _Hurt._

Then came a greater focus on the weak, fearful figure - one with a blurry sense of identification, though Narcissa didn't know whether that came from her or the creature. _Help_.

"I see," Narcissa said aloud. "Protect the weak and protect against the strong?"

Agreement.

Narcissa sat and pondered. It had been a long time since she had thought of planning the future for herself. She swirled a finger in the drying blood.

There were certainly many of the latter in England. She knew their names. She knew almost all their faces. In many cases, she knew they lived.

She knew England would be better off without them.

"Yes," she mused aloud, as much to herself as to the creature. "Yes, I could do that."

It seemed she would be obtaining more Death Eaters on short notice after all.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Cue long, action-packed sequence of Narcissa slaughtering her way through the ranks of the Death Eaters, culminating in Voldemort returning and having an epic showdown with Symbiote-wielding!Narcissa.

The problem is that I can't write action. The entire _point_ of the oneshot would be nonstop Death-Eater-killing action with a skeletal plot to justify it, so I can't kludge around it by skimming over action and just hitting plot points. Bother.

For further background, the Dursleys were even more aggressive in their abuse than in canon, with their rants particularly centering around Harry being a "parasite". Hammer it into a magical child's head that he's a miserable, pathetic creature that can only exist by living off of others and ought to repay that parasitism through unquestioning service, and it might become true. Mind, the symbiote didn't stay around _them_ after the transformation, because, really, even a formless, bodiless creature has standards.

Several years after the fateful transformation, the symbiote continued to eke out a feeble existence by hitching rides on rats, pigeons, and other such vermin. (The resemblance to Voldemort's Albanian years was unintended, but interesting.) While coincidentally crossing the grounds of Malfoy Manor, the symbiote sensed Narcissa's injury and despair, experienced strange, sympathetic stirrings, and, detaching from the current host, crawled towards the source of those unpleasantly familiar emotions. The rest is history.

My vague thoughts on the non-action parts were that, through sufficient binding to Narcissa and feeding on enemies, the symbiote would regain more of an independent mind, have more autonomy, and eventually be able to construct a humanoid body for personal use (while retaining the ability to revert back to symbiote form at a moment's notice). In short, Harry would gradually reemerge from the "symbiote", but probably not make a full reappearance until a final 'epilogue' scene after Voldemort's demise.

Of course, there's a plotting problem in that, since neither Narcissa nor symbiote!Harry have any knowledge of Horcruxes, Voldemort would just pop up again and again. On the other hand, since Narcissa is becoming a comic-book superhero/supervillain, it would be oddly _appropriate_ for her and Harry to live with a recurring adversary whose death never quite sticks...


	4. (COS-HHr) Worked for Sleeping Beauty…

**Author's Note** : A generic Harry/Hermione premise set during Chamber of Secrets. Done by multiple other people, except that this is merely powerful!Harry rather than soulbond!Harry. (Technically it's a nerf from Harry's protect-the-entire-school-without-actually-dying feat in Deathly Hallows, but that's so bizarre I don't know how to incorporate it into stories.)

* * *

 _Harry and Ron had tried to visit Hermione, but visitors were now barred from the hospital wing. "We're taking no more chances," Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the infirmary door. "No, I'm sorry, there's every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off..."_

"No more chances, my foot," Harry said furiously to Ron afterwards, once they were alone. "That's why we had to go after Quirrell ourselves, right? Because Dumbledore's security was so great?"

Ron grimaced. "So what d'you want us to do?" he asked. "Last year, at least, we knew where we were going - I haven't seen any big 'CHAMBER OF SECRETS THIS WAY' signs around, have you -"

"I'm not talking about the Heir, I'm talking about Hermione - and everyone _else_ in the hospital wing," Harry snarled. "If the Heir's going to finish them off - and I'd reckon there's a good chance, since at least _one_ of them must've gotten a good look at him and the mandrakes'll be ready in less than a month - d'you really think anything Hogwarts is going to do will keep him out? Or are we just going to find a petrified Pomfrey and a load of corpses?"

Looking most uncomfortable, Ron said, "Well - what can we do about that, though? It's not like we can help, can we? I dunno how to make those mandrakes grow faster or unmask the Heir before then, and I don't know what more we could do to protect the hospital wing..."

Harry was silent. "There's - one - idea," he managed. He carefully avoided looking at Ron's face. "It's mental, but - you've got to promise not to laugh, all right?"

"Can't really think what would make me laugh right now, what with Dumbledore gone, the Heir stalking the school, and all."

Harry thought that Dumbledore had been a fat lot of help both last year and this one, grand reputation or not, but he didn't say it. "You were raised magic, so you might know if this would work or not, but - Er, d'you think I would count as a prince?"

Ron looked at him in confusion. "Um - Don't know how closely you're related to the Princes, but I don't think so. I heard there was a big scandal when the family's only daughter ran off with a Muggle, but that was ages ago. Dunno what happened to her after that."

"What?" Harry asked, even more bewildered than Ron. "I - No, I don't mean a family named 'Prince'! I mean - the son of a king, or something. Or of a lord, at least - Does it count because I defeated Voldemort?" Ron flinched at the name. "Just - any kind of nobility might do! D'you think I count?"

Ron seemed baffled. "I... Well, my dad says all the 'noble' stuff is a load of rubbish, so I'm not sure. Maybe the Potters are. Why?"

"D'you believe in-" Harry stumbled over the words, but this was more important than embarrassment. "-t- _true love's first kiss?_ "

Looking perplexed, Ron said slowly, "I don't see how this applies..."

"True love's first kiss," Harry said rapidly. "I don't know what wizards think of it, but Muggles - my relatives tried to keep me away from anything magic, but I still managed to pick up some Muggle fairy tales about true love's first kiss, especially from a prince, being able to wake people from enchanted sleeps. And-"

"Right, so you think that might be able to wake them up?" Ron said, realization dawning on his face. Then it disappeared. "No, wait. But they're _Petrified_."

"It's got more to do with an enchanted sleep than it does with being turned to stone," Harry said flatly. "If it didn't, Professor McGonagall could just turn them back, couldn't she? So it's not a Transfiguration, but some sort of weird enchantment. And if even wizards don't know all the details of this Petrification, reckon tales passed down by Muggles would know the difference between that and eternal sleep?"

Ron shook his head. "Look, I don't know - I've never heard about this," he said. "Er - not that it's saying much, I guess, Mum'd always tell Bill not to talk too much to us about his work about a Curse-Breaker because it might scare us or we were too young to hear it or something. But the only really magical thing I've heard about kisses is the Dementor's Kiss, and that sucks your soul out." Harry stared at him with round eyes. "Don't worry," Ron said hastily, "they keep to Azkaban. Just so long as you don't do anything really illegal, you'll be-"

"Azkaban?!" Harry demanded. "They've taken Hagrid to a place with things that could _suck his soul out?!_ "

"They only give people who have committed really heinous crimes the Kiss!" Ron protested, holding up his hands. "He'll be fine, he'll be fine! Er - as fine as anyone who goes to Azkaban can be, at least. But he should only be in there for a few weeks, because they'll find out the Heir's identity by then-"

"Yeah, and with our luck, they'll suppose he's committed a really heinous crime," Harry snarled. "After all, they're out to get Dumbledore, and Hagrid's Dumbledore's man. Who says they won't make an example of him?"

"Wizard justice is better than that, Harry..." Ron began weakly, but he didn't sound convinced. Nor was Harry.

"You're the one who told me people like the Malfoys walked free just because they claimed bewitchment," Harry growled. "So why haven't they decided _Hagrid_ was bewitched? Because they've got it in for Dumbledore loyalists, maybe?" He shook his head. "Not that it matters right now," he said savagely, "because we really _can't_ do anything about that. Not unless we find out who's the _real_ Heir - and hope they don't make up some rot about Hagrid bewitching him or something."

Ron looked embarrassed on behalf of Wizardingkind. "Er... as I was saying," he said, seeming glad to be off that subject, "only thing I know about kisses is the Dementor's. And I reckon you won't be trying to suck anyone's soul out?"

"There have got to be better ways to do it," Harry said dryly. "No matter how much I hate Snape, I'm not about to snog him."

"Merlin's beard, I hope not."

Harry sniggered at the look on Ron's face, then sobered. "Well - you haven't told me it's just a myth, at least, so there _might_ be some truth to it. And since we've got no other option and the Heir might be around any minute, it can't hurt to try."

"So how are you going to persuade Percy?"

Harry felt somewhat as though he'd been hit upside the head by a Bludger. "Percy? What's he got to do with it?"

"Well, d'you know anyone else who got Petrified who had a date?" Ron asked, frowning. "I don't know if it's 'true love', but -" He blanched. "Please don't tell me you were thinking about getting Filch for Mrs. Norris?"

" _God_ , no!" Harry said, utterly revolted. "How could you even think of that? That's _sick_ , Ron!"

"Well, you weren't thinking of Percy, and I couldn't think of anyone else!" Ron protested. " _Who?_ And _for_ who?"

Harry suddenly found the ceiling very interesting. "Well... look, it doesn't have to be _romance_ , does it?" he said in a voice that came out strangely insistent even to his own ears. "I mean, my mum's love is what protected me from Voldemort, Dumbledore said-"

"It is?" When Harry briefly looked down at Ron, he saw Ron's eyes widen, then blink several times. "All - all right, I guess he would know, then. Maybe this 'love' thing's got something to it." Now Ron seemed to be the one who'd been hit upside the head by a Bludger. "Sorry, sorry. Go on."

"Right. Well - she certainly wasn't feeling _romantic_ towards me, right? So just love counts. Family love." He twiddled his thumbs and found the ceiling extremely interesting. At this rate, he was going to memorize the fine points of Hogwarts architecture... "And love is... lovely love, I mean..." Summoning up his Gryffindor courage, he gabbled it out.

"Hermione. I've got to kiss Hermione."

Harry had several seconds to appreciate the intricate designs on the corridor ceiling before Ron spoke. "I... erm. All right, then..." Another pause. "But - you said it was your mum's love, right? So shouldn't it be their parents-"

Ron cut himself off and said, before Harry could speak, "They don't have magic, do they."

"Yeah," said Harry, relieved to be past the worst of it. "Makes you wonder if there's more than one reason he's going after Muggleborns, doesn't it?"

When he looked down, he saw Ron looking thoughtful. "Could be," he said. "If there's that much magic in parental love - except, wait, hold on a minute. Harry - a _lot_ of families died during the war. Kids included. Don't you think _their_ parents loved them?"

Harry sighed. "I don't know," he said honestly. "Voldemort - at the end of last year, he said he only killed my mother because she tried to keep him from killing me. He didn't say how she tried. Dumbledore just said she died to save me, too. It could be she did something neither of them were keen on telling me - what happened to Quirrell was - well. Dumbledore said he couldn't bear to touch something so good." He looked down on the floor. "I can't imagine that anything purely good," he said, "would - do what it did to Quirrell." He took a deep breath. "But I think my mum did what she had to."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Point is - if love can do that to an enemy, surely it can do better things to a - a friend," Harry said. "Surely?"

* * *

They'd hastily ducked into the hospital wing, under Harry's father's invisibility cloak, when opportunity presented itself in the form of Madame Pomfrey ushered in a seventh-year girl who had botched a Charm; the poor witch had lost half her hair, broken out in a nasty rash, and acquired a very unpleasant-sounding cough. "There's one every year," they heard the nurse mutter as she swept past, "there's _always_ someone who forgets to go _counterclockwise_ on the seventh spin rather than clockwise..."

Awkwardly, they shuffled their way toward Hermione's bed, freezing whenever Madame Pomfrey came near; the last thing they needed was to be mistaken for the Heir and promptly incapacitated. In retrospect, it might have been better for Harry to go in alone, but Ron had wanted to see her too and... it seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, Ron could act as a backup if Harry's kiss didn't work... maybe. For some reason, Harry found the idea strangely unpleasant, but if it was for Hermione's welfare, he'd endure that. It didn't make much sense, anyway. It was just as a friend, after all.

Arriving at Hermione's bedside, the two of them looked down at her: rigid as a board, she stared up at the ceiling, eyes unseeing. Or so it seemed - how would they tell if she couldn't move a muscle, anyway? Horribly, Harry remembered news articles about people who had been in comas for years, aware of everything around them, yet unable to give the slightest sign of continued consciousness...

He swallowed hard.

"You keep watch," Harry whispered to Ron. "I'm going to be - otherwise occupied, all right?" He didn't know how the cloak might affect visibility as he bent over her, and the last thing he needed was for Pomfrey to notice one of her patients had suddenly gone partly invisible. Ron nodded.

"Good luck."

"Thanks," Harry mumbled. He looked down at Hermione, his stomach tying itself into knots. _Would_ she ever wake up? Yes, the potion ought to do it... but what if it didn't? No one knew precisely _how_ the Heir was doing this to people. What if it was some sort of awfulness that, somehow, was immune to the roots' restorative properties? What if she was like this forever? What if _everyone_ so Petrified was like this forever? What if that was why the Heir had left them alive? If he knew that, this way, they were _good as_ dead, but they would divert attention away from his _real_ plans? If -

He shook his head; worrying would do him no good. He just had to do it. He shut his eyes and tried to feel as loving as possible, summoning up his shared experiences with Hermione -

 _The troll - Darting in and trying to save him from Snape, managing to save him from Quirrel instead - The Devil's Snare - Parting between the flames - "There are more important things - friendship and bravery and - oh Harry - be careful!"_

A lump in his throat, he bent towards her and -

A hand grabbed him and hauled him back by the scruff of his shirt. Madame Pomfrey bustled past, retrieved a potion, and bustled back past them to the ailing Charms student. Ron finally released his grip on Harry's shirt.

On second thought... this was Hermione. Might as well do things he'd been doing them the entire time he'd known her.

Without further thought, he took a deep breath and bent down - nothing interrupting him this time - to place a kiss on her stiff mouth. Filled with a mixture of awkwardness and desperation, he tried to pour everything he felt into the kiss - love, and concern, and fear, and wanting her to wake up right now - for _everyone_ to wake up right now - for this nightmare to be over, whatever it took from him - anything - he'd do _anything_ for her to wake up and be _safe_ , be protected from the Heir, and - _anything -_

All of a sudden, he felt a warm, rushing sensation. The world dimmed and seemed to sway around him; his knees gave way beneath him.

The last thing he heard was a cry of "Harry? _Harry!_ "

* * *

"-and I would have thrown you out _myself_ if it wasn't for it _working!_ "

"Well - er - I wouldn't say that's insignificant," Ron argued, unthinkingly backing down from the nurse's rant. The two of them stood at Harry's bedside, along with the former residents of the hospital wing.

"But Madame Pomfrey, what _happened_?" Hermione begged, holding onto Harry's hand. Harry himself was certainly not petrified, but very much unconscious; he'd gone down like a sack of bricks the moment the Petrified patients began to stir, and hadn't responded to any of the ensuing outcry. Ron had found his skin clammy before Madame Pomfrey had shoved him away and moved Harry into Hermione's freshly-vacated bed.

"Given the timing and the situation, it would seem Mr. Potter drove himself into magical exhaustion by restoring all of the Petrification victims at once," she huffed. "To be most frank with you, I don't understand _how_ he persuaded his magic to do it, but potent intentions can sometimes produce results even the greatest wizards cannot replicate." She shook her head. "If they could, of course, there would be no need for Mediwitches - now would there?"

"So Harry wanted to heal us all?" Colin Creevey asked breathlessly, eyes shining.

"Not precisely," Ron mumbled, and regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. Everyone turned to him. Being the center of attention was not so great as he might have imagined.

"Then what?" Hermione asked, Clearwater and Finch-Fletchley looking equally curious. Even Madame Pomfrey raised an eyebrow.

"Erm - something about - true... er, love's first... um... kiss," Ron said, finding a convenient space on the wall to stare at. Obviously Harry had the right idea back in the corridor. "In a, you know, family way," he added in the world's most unconvincing voice.

There was silence. Ron wondered whether Harry would be interested in speaking to him ever again once he came to... Well, it was _his_ idea in the first place... "I suppose there is some support in the German literature," Madame Pomfrey said slowly. "However, reports were anecdotal and poorly-documented, and took place centuries ago, besides..."

"Funny," Finch-Fletchley said, "I was under the impression those kisses weren't in the family way. Unless they left the girl in the family way." That provoked dirty looks from the two girls, but he was unashamed.

Ron fidgeted. "Well," he said, "Harry said it, and since he made it work, I'd reckon he would know what he was talking about, woulnd't you?"

Absolutely no one looked convinced. Creevey was staring at Hermione, Hermione was staring at Harry with pink cheeks, Finch-Fletchley looked smug, and Clearwater was mumbling something in a hurt voice about Percy. Nearly-Headless Nick chose that moment to swoop down.

"Well done!" he cried, his head falling off in his excitement. "I say, what's chivalry without a fair lady, eh? Done like a true Gryffindor, my boy! I dare say-"

"That you'll be thrown out of this infirmary if you don't quiet down and let the poor child rest!" Madame Pomfrey snapped. Cowed, Nearly-Headless Nick floated away.

"And how are you doing, my dear girl?" Ron heard him say. There was a yowl in response.

"So," Ron said loudly, attempting to dispel the current awkwardness. "This is all really great, but - Harry thought one of you ought to have gotten a good look at the Heir, so, erm - who is it? Any of you recognize them?"

All gazes turned to him. And then they stayed there.

"What is it?" he asked. "Er - everyone? What's the look?"

Only Madame Pomfrey seemed not to be in on it; when he turned around, he even found Nearly-Headless Nick regarding him with the same solemn expression. When he turned back, Penelope Clearwater ducked her head and looked away. Hermione seemed about to cry, while Finch-Fletchley's eyes were cold. Creevey shook his head and gave Ron a look of sympathy.

"I'm sorry," the first-year said. "I've got a little brother too - I don't know what I'd do if -" He swallowed hard and bowed his head.

A horrible feeling settled into Ron's stomach. "What - I don't understand," he said, staring back at them. "What d'you mean - Ginny? What's Ginny got to do with this? Is there something wrong with Ginny?"

But a numb, disbelieving part of him already knew what Hermione, tears trickling down her cheeks, would say before she said it.

"It's Ginny," she said. Her hand tightened around Harry's. "Ginny is the Heir of Slytherin."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Blah. Not sure how to continue from this point, really; I had an idea for an alternate 'final confrontation' in which, the moment Tom Riddle senses trouble, he seizes control of Ginny, barricades himself in the Gryffindor first-year girls' bedroom, and takes any students he can drag along as hostages. Once that concludes, regardless of the outcome, Harry would be heralded as a powerful wizard after his stunt in the hospital wing (with the traditional exaggerated Wizarding histronics working in his favor, for once) and Dumbledore would return to the position of Headmaster, but find himself somewhat less popular amid questions of ' _Just how did you let an eleven-year-old girl sneak a powerful Dark artifact into the school, anyway?_ ' and ' _If a thirteen-year-old girl figured out the monster was a basilisk, why didn't YOU?_ '

However, after that would come the Harry/Hermione romance, and I find romance difficult to write unless it's an established relationship. The best route I can think up for a relatively-rapid solution (i.e. one that won't run into a brick wall when Sirius is handled during the summer and third year arrives without a plot) is:

The Horcrux is retrieved intact from the final showdown. (Practically mandatory without a basilisk fang conveniently at hand.) Someone other than Albus "Never Tell Nobody Nothin'" Dumbledore gets hold of it and has it analyzed by an expert, whereupon it is recognized as a Horcrux and destroyed. It is now known by _someone_ that Tom Riddle made Horcruxes. Funniest solution would be to have a Hit Wizard dispatched to hunt down Tom Riddle (since anyone who creates Horcruxes is a bad actor, and Riddle's known intellect and competence makes him dangerous) and "incidentally" come across Voldemort's specter in Albania, since _canon implies he went right back to his former hiding-place after PS/SS and stayed there until Wormtail tracked him down_. One Ghostbusters homage later, the Dark Lord Voldemort is permanently preserved as a harmless curiosity-in-a-jar in the depths of the Department of Mysteries. Have a great time with your immortality, Voldemort!

Rest is fairly generic - Harry looks into verdicts from the last war, one thing follows another, and Sirius is freed. Harry/Hermione develops. The Dursleys' abuse comes out, one way or another, and they receive their just desserts. Dumbledore mucks with Harry's life. Depending on whether that's due more to malice or incompetence, his fate would vary from a savage end at the hands of one of the many people he wronged to enforced retirement to a nursing home. Happy ending ensues, epilogue probably set two decades later in a reformed Wizarding world.

If necessary, third-year plot could be padded by a furious Lucius Malfoy gunning for revenge (he never did get around to that in canon, did he?) and Dumbledore's attempts to railroad Harry into the personality of a compliant martyr. The trouble would be keeping it interesting while not causing the readers to wonder why Harry and Hermione don't just give Wizarding Britain the finger and flee overseas to Beauxbatons.


	5. (HBP) Katie Bell Dies

**Author's Note:** A different divergence point than usual for Harry: Draco Malfoy's first murder attempt succeeds. I've also considered diverging at the second (Ron's poisoning) - may write that up and post it as well.

* * *

As Katie writhed in agony in the air, her screams echoing off the shops of Hogsmeade, Harry tried his best to get her down. Even as Ron and Leanne put all their might into doing the same, and Hermione screamed " _Finite! Finite!_ " behind them, a part of him knew it was no use; her screams had already reached a crescendo, and were now, horribly, growing weaker. He had heard such screams once before, and had privately prayed to never hear such again - but not from the Cruciatus Curse.

No, this was the sort of desperate cries he had heard from Quirrell as his mother's protection worked its great and terrible magic. And that part of him, no matter how much he refused to believe it, knew this would have the same outcome.

All at once, Katie's back arched and she threw out her limbs as she let out one final, terrible scream, one that seemed to drown out all other sound in the world; then her limbs slacked, her voice died down, and she went terribly, terribly still.

Whatever magic held her in the air gave out after that. "Katie?" Leanne asked, her voice trembling, as they brought her to the ground, but Harry could hear in her voice that she, too, knew the truth. No answer would come.

"God..." Ron gasped, looking down at Katie's slack, pale face. "She can't..."

Hermione knelt beside them, waving her wand and chanting strange incantations, but Harry knew it was already no use. Katie's eyes stared blindly outwards, oblivious to the wind and sleet; with a shaking hand, he reached out and closed them. It was the least he owed his Chaser.

"Harry!" Hermione screamed, a hysterical edge in her voice. "You can't know she's - She -" Her voice hitched, and she hunched over the body of the girl she had been trying to save, hyperventilating, before letting out a long wail.

Leanne stared at the body of her friend as blindly as Katie's corpse had been staring back. "Katie?" she asked mindlessly. "Katie? You - I - You can't be, I - Not now - Not when the last thing I said to you was - Katie? Katie, please, I - Oh please, wake up - _please_ -"

Ron said nothing, his freckles standing out starkly against the whiteness of his skin.

Harry got up, filled with a great and terrible sense of purpose. "What happened, Leanne? What was that package?" He looked down at it where it lay in the mud, a green glitter visible through the sodden paper; with a nonverbal Levitation Charm, he flicked it upwards and scrutinized it more closely. An ornate opal necklace was halfway exposed, and Harry's eyes narrowed as he took it in.

Oh, he remembered that nasty piece of rubbish from Borgin and Burkes. Hard for a twelve-year-old boy not to have done so, with the avid morbid curiosity of the young - How many victims had it claimed, again? Seventeen? Twenty? Add another, then.

An unpleasant heat was spreading through him, despite the chill.

"She - she came back from the bathroom - holding it and looking strange - said she had to deliver it to Hog-" Leanne lost her voice to a storm of crying, with Ron feebly patting her on the back before Hermione pulled her into a hug.

Harry could not offer such comfort, because he was bolting back to the Three Broomsticks. The crowd turned to stare at him as he burst in the doors, and he took advantage of their attention. "Has anyone left here in a hurry?" he demanded; when no one volunteered useful information, he swore and shouted, "No one leave these premises! Anyone who does is a suspect!"

He might not have been an Auror, but mobs had a tendency to obey authority figures, and he heard frightened agreeing noises as he ran to the bathrooms. " _There's been a murder!_ " he shouted as he shoved open the ladies' restroom door. _"Someone Imperiused a girl and gave her a cursed artifact that killed her! Whoever did it was in here! Who came in and out?"_ He shook his head, ignoring the screams and swooning occupants. "Never mind - _who came out_?"

Several harried and hysterical minutes later, no one had left the Three Broomsticks, but everyone who had been in the ladies' restroom around the time of Katie's Imperius was lined up against the wall, wands cast down at their feet, either of their own volition or after being ratted out by those at nearby tables. Even Madame Rosmerta, looking quite upset, had dutifully joined in. "I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," he said to all the girls and ladies lined up. "All but one of you are innocent people swept up in this. One of you is a murderer." He took a deep breath. "We've got to find out who." Without taking his eyes off the suspects, he raised his voice. "Could someone please Floo the Ministry? This would go a lot easier with Veritaserum."

"I could," offered Tonks, one of the unfortunates, "if you'd..."

He shook his head. "Sorry, Tonks. Not even for you." He sighed as his anger faded a little. "I know you're not the one who did it-" He hoped- "-but I've got no right to demand this of everyone if I'm going to play favorites."

"I'm off-duty, but I'm an Auror," a male voice called from behind him. "I'll do it. Who's the victim, and what was the method."

"Katie Bell, seventh-year Gryffindor. A good Chaser and -" Harry shook his head, angry at himself; that wasn't relevant- "Cursed necklace. Opal. Think I saw it at Borgin and Burkes once - something about sixteen, eighteen victims -"

"They were _selling_ that thing?" someone screamed behind him. "I wrote my Defense thesis on it!"

Without further ado, there were sounds of scrambling and then formulaic chatter as the fireplace was opened for a fire-call. Harry ignored it and scanned the line-up. "Stay calm," he said to the frightened group. "All but one of you has got nothing to fear."

The witches of all ages looked at each other with emotions ranging from suspicion to terror, as though scrutiny alone could distinguish the monster in their midst. Some were muttering to themselves, either complaining about the injustice of it all, murmuring about the horror of these times, or hoping fervently that Aurors didn't care about cheating on homework; Rosmerta, down at the end of the line-up, wrung her hands and babbled on incoherently, though her ramblings seemed to revolve around how this would absolutely ruin her business and how everyone would say her poor, poor establishment was cursed. It seemed uncharacteristically shallow of her, but Harry couldn't blame her for inaccuracy. Tonks shook her head and looked at Harry again. "It's not this simple," she said to him. "Harry - don't you realize - the Imperius _can be chained_."

He felt like she had thrown a pail of icewater over his head - no mean feat, considering he had just come in from the sleet. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "I - _how?_ It _can?_ "

"By talented users, yes," she said, amid gasps from the lined-up witches and other occupants of the pub. "It might not even be anyone here - it might be someone who Imperiused one of them previously and wasn't even here today."

"Can't be that hard to ambush someone in the bathroom," Harry said, "so I'd think they'd have done it first chance-"

"Still - they may not even have been in the pub," she said seriously. "All you know is that whoever _did_ hand off the package, Imperiused or not, was here-"

"And that's where the Veritaserum comes in, isn't it?" He paced before the group, keeping his wand at the ready. "Whoever did this expected Katie to make it to the castle. They didn't expect to get caught. So no antidote in their systems _or_ that of their proxy, _and_ , even if it's just a proxy, they might be able to say something about the person giving them ord-"

" _-vra!_ "

Acid-green light lit the pub, and only blind Seeker reflex saved Harry's life. He threw himself backwards, crashing across a table, as the green bolt shot past him; it missed his chest by a hair's breadth and crashed into a wall, obliterating a ragged circle two feet wide upon impact. Deafening screams filled the pub, and out of the corner of his eye he saw people stampeding out, some even Vanishing windowpanes and clambering through the gaps. The lined-up witches, to their credit, had exactly the opposite reaction, piling on the one who had cast the spell.

Rosmerta.

Harry could not believe it. Her babbling now made sense: she had been making everyone around her tune her out to mask when "nonsense" became the opening syllables of an Unforgivable. But - _her_? _Her?_

It _had_ to be the Imperius, but -

"Oi! Order! Order!" Tonks called, having reclaimed her own wand and aimed it at the maenad band, who now hid Rosmerta wholly from sight. "She may be under Imperius, it _may not be her_ \- Harry, back me up!"

"Don't kill her," said Harry, getting up from the table. " _She must be made to talk._ "

His quiet words commanded more authority than Tonks's shouts, and the witches reluctantly attempted to back off. "Attempted" being the key word; Rosmerta was fighting like a demon, and it took several of them just to hold her down.

Harry looked into her wildly-rolling eyes, wide but completely devoid of thought. Imperius, he thought, but no matter which it was - With effort, he lined up a clear shot and snarled, " _Stupefy._ " She jerked as the red bolt hit her, and he followed it up with a Full-Body Bind. With grateful looks on their faces, the witches slowly stood up; one young girl in blue and bronze looked at him as though he were a great hero.

He didn't have the heart to disillusion her, but that was bunk. If anyone had been standing behind him when he dodged... "How did she cast that?" he demanded. "I had everyone drop their..."

"She had this," offered a gray-haired old witch, holding up a wand. "A hold-out, I think. Her real one rolled over that way." She pointed, and Harry indeed saw a short stick resting against the leg of a nearby table. Considering how attached wizards were to their wands, it wasn't likely to belong to anyone else, so...

"Give me that." The old witch complied. "Wonder what else she's cast with this," Harry muttered, weighing it in his hand. Her regular wand might have run the risk of a random _Priori Incantem_ inspection, but a spare no one knew she had... "Great. Just bloody great..." He might have heard some witch sniff disapprovingly at his language, but didn't give a damn. "Aren't all wands on file with the Ministry?" He remembered reading that in some Prophet article...

"Not to make tensions run higher than they are, Harry, but - a lot of people have been killed, and many of their wands were missing when the bodies were found," Tonks said, her face strained and her hair a shocking white. "I don't think I'm telling all of you anything that hasn't been printed publicly by saying that we suspect Death Eaters to be trading in stolen wands..."

"Isn't that just wonderful," Harry said savagely. "Well-"

And that was when someone entered through the Floo; he whirled around to find John Dawlish gaping at the scene. "Oh, _you_ took your sweet bloody time!" Harry bellowed, and he did not feel guilty in the _least_.

* * *

"But, Harry," Hermione protested, "you can't _know_ it's Malf-"

"I don't care."

"Harry, mate, you-"

"Shut up, Ron."

"Even McGonagall thi-"

" _Shut up_ , Hermione."

Harry had been released from questioning in reasonably short order - Scrimgeour's Ministry was much saner than Fudge's, he had to say - but his mood had not improved in the hours since. Seeing a girl murdered in front of him and nearly being assassinated himself had ripped off the bandage he had tied around his emotions after the catastrophe at the Ministry months prior, and he could no longer pretend to be a carefree schoolboy doing and feeling carefree things. He had no doubt about who had means, motive, and opportunity, and, if he was correct, Katie's blood was on _his_ hands. He'd known Malfoy was up to no good, he'd known Malfoy had been looking into Dark artifacts, and he knew Malfoy had been bragging about some service Voldemort had requested of him. Recklessly, carelessly, he'd playacted at "gathering proof" rather than playing the vigilante, as he'd _always_ had to do at Hogwarts, and now a girl was dead.

Oh, he had no illusions that Katie was the _intended_ target. Word had come back that she had touched the necklace through a hole in her glove - if only it had been whole, she would have reached the castle alive and her package would have reached its target. Who might have it have been? Him? Slughorn? Dumbledore? It didn't matter now. Malfoy would not make another attempt.

Harry turned his back on his protesting friends and dashed out the portrait hole, pulling the Invisibility Cloak over his head once he was out of range of witnesses and pulling out the Marauder's Map. If Malfoy was _fortunate_ , the upcoming "citizen's arrest" would go smoothly, his Dark Mark would be plainly visible on his arm, and Harry would drag him into custody himself. If not...

Harry was sick unto _death_ of the people who were supposed to be _protecting_ students twiddling their thumbs and defending the perpetrators. One way or another, Malfoy wouldn't be hurting _anyone_ again.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Vengeful!Vigilante!Harry, obviously. Doesn't need Independent or Powerful; between the Cloak and the Map, he can make the Heir's reign of terror look like a bad prank. Outside Hogwarts, he basically just needs to remember Dobby's existence, and he can go on an invisible, unblockable teleportation tour of _incapacitating_ known Death Eaters and sympathizers. _Draco dormiens numquam titillandus._

Yes, Malfoy used Protean-Charmed Galleons to communicate with Rosmerta, which I forgot while writing this:

 _"Enchanted coins. [...] I had one and she had the other and I could send her messages—"_ [Half-Blood Prince]

So some might argue he couldn't tell her to respond in real time. Well, two possibilities. The first is that he was hiding nearby, whether in the pub (and escaping Harry's notice in the hubbub) or just outside, and puppeteering her from there. I'm under the impression that the Imperius allowed some degree of "remote control", as its canon instances _seem_ to depict the victims being controlled by the caster directly speaking into their mind.

 _And then he heard Mad-Eye Moody's voice, echoing in some distant chamber of his empty brain: Jump onto the desk… jump onto the desk…_ [Goblet of Fire]

 _Harry pointed his wand at Travers._

 _"Imperio!"_

 _The wizard turned and set off along the dark track at a smart pace._ [Deathly Hallows]

The second is that he had standing orders for Rosmerta to take as many people as possible down with her if she was in danger of capture. If her prospective victims shoot to kill in return, all the better. Dead women can't talk.

Obviously the effect would be worse if it was the _second_ attempt that succeeded. Harry wouldn't even bother with the authorities at that point. He also knows Snape is outright attempting to assist Malfoy by that time, so Snape is probably the next stop on Harry's grand tour after Malfoy.

Authorial judgment would determine whether this ended up as a proactive!Harry fix-fic or a harsh look at the disastrous consequences of allowing a Death Eater to run wild and pushing Harry too far. After all, without - _ahem_ \- authorial intervention, he's not finding all the Horcruxes. (The same is true in canon, but it's even more true here - since Harry will obviously be forced to break from Dumbledore, he's not even _learning_ of the Horcruxes unless he gets lucky with a vision.)

The best he could accomplish without any favorable freak accidents would be causing Death Eaters to abandon ship when it becomes evident their Lord can't protect them, which is... eh... a fifty-fifty chance, since they give up the cause in canon the _instant_ that Voldemort falls - _both_ times. Ha, _there's_ a fulfillment of the " _mark him as his equal_ " clause of the prophecy - Voldemort is left without followers after Harry murders all the diehards, Harry is left without friends because of their revulsion at him murdering all the diehards, and the war dwindles into a personal feud between two completely-friendless mass-murdering lunatics. See, Trelawney _isn't_ fraudulent after all!

Since that would be too depressing, I'd probably go with the fix-fic, cliched as it would be. At least the point of divergence would be original.


	6. (OOTP)Harry Tells Walburga About Reality

**Author's Note:** Shooting fish in a barrel, of course, but these sorts of stories are always satisfying.

#

 _Lupin and Mrs. Weasley darted forward and tried to tug the cur tains shut over the old woman, but they would not close and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though try ing to tear at their faces._

 _"Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers —"_

"OH, SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Harry's temper had not been calmed by his earlier outburst, and a dark part of him savored the opportunity to rip into someone who was _not_ one of his friends. "YOU HEARD ME!" he roared as the woman stopped and gawked at him. "YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DIRT AND VILENESS? HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR MASTER?"

The woman's crazed face contorted in rage anew. "The House of Black _has_ no master, _boy!_ We do-"

"VOLDEMORT!" he bellowed. "OR, SHOULD I SAY, TOM RIDDLE? THE MUTATED, FREAKISH SON OF A MUGGLE? THE THING THAT WRITHED AND SCRAPED IN THE DIRT FOR A DECADE, CLAWING AT EVERY PIGEON AND RODENT THAT -"

Her face had drained of color. Come to think of it, things were awfully silent around him as well. "Tom?" she whispered. "Tom from Slyth-"

She snarled and rallied. "Lies, boy, madness and lies! You have no proof! The Dark Lord -"

"I AM LORD VOLDEMORT!" Gasps around him; he bit back the urge to curse and quickly clarified. "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE! IT'S AN ANAGRAM, YOU STUPID OLD HAG! AN ANAGRAM! REARRANGE THE BLOODY LETTERS!"

Her mouth moved as she began to sound out the letters, and then she shook her head and sneered at him. "Nonsense! How would _you_ know?"

"BECAUSE TOM RIDDLE TOLD ME," he roared, "RIGHT BEFORE I SHOVED A BASILISK FANG THROUGH HIS HEART!" He extended his right arm and pulled up his sleeve, bearing the scar where the fang had gone through his arm. "HE SET SLYTHERIN'S MONSTER ON ME, AND I KILLED IT - AND HIM! A BLOODY TWELVE-YEAR-OLD, WITH NOTHING BUT DUMBLEDORE'S PHOENIX FOR SUPPORT!" His lips peeled back from his teeth. "You know," he said, coughing a little past the rawness of his throat, "he said we were like twins - can you imagine that? Me, the son of a _Muggleborn..._ though I know you'd love to use worse terms... My Muggle aunt - well, uncle's sister - told me my mother was a bitch and I ought to have been drowned at birth... You know, you're the first witch I've met who really reminds me of her - I know you love that, don't you? You remind me of the entire family, really... Most Muggle-like witch I've ever met..."

The old woman looked as though he'd come up to her on the street and begun spewing the liveliest vileness imaginable. Harry wasn't done. "But then," he whispered, leaning in close, "my blood is purer than the Dark Lord's... at least both my parents were your sort... and he was the son of a Muggle, can you imagine that? A Muggle who abandoned his mother because he found out she was a witch... and she died giving birth to him... the last heiress of Slytherin - she had to be, I can't imagine anyone else running around without claiming the title, the way Slytherin is - dying for a Muggle's son..."

She looked half her size; something had gone out of her, and as she sagged back from the portrait's surface, Harry almost felt sorry for her. "You're lying," she said weakly. "The Dark Lord - he can't be Tom, he - I _knew_ Tom Riddle, boy - very talented, but -"

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son," Harry recited. She stopped dead. "Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master. Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe."

"I've heard..." she said softly, then shook her head. "I never knew of the exact words, but I knew _of_ that rit- Boy, _what has that to do with anything?_ "

She was working herself up into a rage again, obviously to protect herself from the knowledge she had just received; Harry gave her a savage, mirthless smile. He would not let her. "I heard those words at the beginning of this summer," he said, his mouth hurting from the expression into which he had stretched it. He didn't care. " _I_ was the enemy. A foul little rat, one I _greatly_ regret sparing, was the servant. And the father? Why, that dear Muggle, Tom Riddle _Senior_ , whom the Dark Lord acknowledged as his father once he arose. I don't know why your lot didn't object a bit more to hearing that, but - I suppose they didn't have a choice at that point, did they? He was a bit peeved that, thirteen years later, not one of them had lifted a finger to seek him out -"

"The Dark Lord? The Dark Lord acknowledged a _Muggle_ as his father? Before - everyone?"

"Avery. Crabbe. Goyle. Malfoy-"

"Lucius? Dear little Lucius knelt before an acknowledged _Muggle's son_?"

"Approached him on his knees and kissed his robes," Harry said, something ugly making him smile with genuine glee. In fairness, Voldemort had not yet confessed that he had required his father's bone for the ritual, so perhaps they had not known of his parentage _quite_ yet, or missed the reference, or perhaps hoped that some great and powerful wizard had masqueraded under the name of Tom Riddle... but he did not care...

An anguished cry broke from the woman. "We married Cissy to that - that _bootlicker of filth_?"

They'd named a girl Sissy? Perhaps that explained a lot about Draco. "I suppose you did," Harry said casually. He shrugged. "I suppose your house was befouled all along, wasn't it?"

She gave a choking sob and drew back further, looking like nothing more than a broken old woman. "Regulus," she croaked. " _Regulus_." Tears brimmed in her eyes, then began to leak down her face. "My boy - my son, my only _good_ son - my poor little boy - died - for a _Muggle's_ son -"

She let out a great wail, then buried her face in her hands and howled. Harry was torn between his better nature telling him to pity the woman, whatever her personal foulness, and a deep, ugly part of him that would have gloried in seeing a Dursley so broken.

As though in answer to that latter part, slow, soft claps came from behind him. Harry whirled around and found a man with long black hair standing in a doorway, his face expressionless even as his hands moved in applause.

"Congratulations, Harry," said Sirius Black. "I never would have imagined someone could manage to so _quickly_ break my mother."

#

 **Author's Note:** Catharsis aside, this has a few implications:

All Order members now know Voldemort is a Muggle's son.

Because Harry couldn't quite resist twisting the knife, they now know his relatives are so foul that he can compare them to Walburga Black without hyperbole. _Hopefully_ this gets one of them worried enough to break from Dumbledore's grand plan.

Assuming Kreacher crept in to overhear the fight, his poor Mistress's anguish might be enough for him to pull Harry aside and talk to him about the Locket. That kicks the Horcrux plot off sooner. Additionally, Kreacher's loyalty is bought by the Locket's destruction, so the Order may lose a major leak during the OOTP year - consequences uncertain, but handwave that saves some poor fool's life. Certainly the Ministry battle needs a different incentive if Harry can check in on Sirius and get an honest answer.

If Snape reports back, Voldemort's blood pressure just rose twenty points. The Inner Circle may have trouble fleeing, but the rank-and-file Death Eaters (or prospective recruits) may defect in response to Harry screaming in everyone's faces "DO YOU KNOW TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE, MR. "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT" - TRY IT, IT'S AN ANAGRAM - IS A MUGGLE'S SON?"

Anyway, it's interesting to consider the fallout of Harry snapping and _using_ some of his eclectic collection of plot information for once.


	7. (COS) Alternate Lockhart

**Author's Note:** Found this in my saved drafts. Don't feel inspired to continue it right now, but figured I ought to put it out there.

Only a mild AU, but an unconventional divergence regarding what identity someone chooses to take on.

* * *

Gilderoy Lockhart swept about his residence, preparing for his new position at Hogwarts.

Everything about his home was stolen, stolen, stolen - from his skills to his wand to the house itself, courtesy of a Confunded Muggle.

Well, except for his identity. That was fabricated.

Several years ago, he'd painstakingly sneaked up on a drunk, pulled the wand out of the half-conscious man's pocket, and run like hell. That was the start of his new life: a man with no past, barely any present, and a dubious future. It was still better than he'd spent the preceding years.

Once he'd taken that first crucial step, he'd sat back and coldly analyzed the British Wizarding world. Its two leading lights were a pompous, flamboyant old man who pretended to be a lunatic and an arrogant, melodramatic old snake who wasn't pretending. Therefore: wizards had a taste for egotistical, flashy maniacs with eccentric gimmicks to hold the attention of the dimwitted and childish, which was half the Wizarding world... on a very good day.

Therefore: become an egotistical, flashy maniac as notable for his eccentricity as his magical skill and power.

A problem: the throne of God was already occupied. A quick look back through the history of the Wizarding world showed that only one flaming... er, flamboyant... lunatic had operated in an area at the same time - the twin presences of Dumbledore and Voldemort were an exception brought on by Voldemort's inability to be killed and unwillingness to engage Dumbledore in direct combat long enough to kill his opponent. Fortunately Voldemort was out of the picture, but Dumbledore was still comfortably ensconced in his position.

Therefore: fall back on his old strategy of mugging it up as a harmless moron.

This might have seemed difficult while also acquiring a reputation for magical skill and power, but fortunately wizards were not skilled at drawing lines from Point A to Point B. No one had questioned how he could keep up with the others in school, despite being a bumbling butterball with no obvious talents beyond sycophancy. (At least the "butterball" part had been accurate... Merlin's beard, how he missed triple-decker chocolate cakes...) So long as he kept his displays of skill and power separate from his _obviously_ -incompetent persona, he would be fine.

That required him to have opportunities to showcase his mental incompetence to as many people as possible. He discarded the route that came first to mind, that of taking up politics: he had no connections, and even if he managed to bamboozle people into supporting him, he was a dead man if any reporter started breaking out more advanced rituals to investigate his past. Or worse - the Dementor's Kiss _technically_ didn't kill, after all.

So he decided to become a celebrity. In what, he had no idea: his skillset slanted heavily toward the illegitimate, the consequence of living a playboy existence at school without a plush inheritance upon which to fall back after graduation. Then the answer presented itself to him.

Why bother building a legitimate career when you could fake one?

The mental arts were boring, tedious, and quite literally mind-numbing. Additionally, you had to start young if you wanted to be at all good at them: as closely as anyone could tell, the brain stopped being plastic enough to be _very_ good at them after the seventeenth birthday or thereabouts, and the best you could hope for after that was a nice career at the Ministry sending Muggle Alzheimer's rates skyrocketing. And, what do you know, Hogwarts chewed up exactly the prime interval for learning Occlumency. What an interesting and tragic coincidence, much like the silly Ministry regulations that classed the Patronus Charm as much more advanced than it was, which _incidentally_ had the effect of discouraging people from learning the one charm that could counter the Ministry's favored shock troops. The Wizarding world was certainly a place full of wonder and mysterious happenstance.

So you either had to be a freak genius like Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, or a certain grease elemental to make time for your studies _and_ drilling yourself in tedious, lengthy, difficult exercises, or you could utterly slack off and do the bare minimum at Hogwarts to avoid expulsion while spending the rest of your time on other projects. His old gang at school had encouraged the latter.

Admittedly, that was because nothing short of murder would have prevented anyone with _those_ surnames from taking whatever job and enjoying whatever lifestyle they wanted, but when in Rome - hope you're already on the first ship bound for Asia by the time the Roman lenders come after you. And, since they already knew him to be the stupidest, weakest member of the group, he was free to pursue whatever side projects he wanted when he didn't care for their latest one.

Incidentally, giving away that one had skill in the mental arts was stupid, stupid, _stupid_ , about tantamount to actually agreeing to let the Sorting Hat stuff you in Slytherin. Who _wanted_ to be in a House that proudly announced that its members were scheming little bastards? Only the idiots that fancied themselves sharp, but couldn't plot their way out of a paper bag. It was just like the twits in Ravenclaw: anyone who defined themselves around being "smart" wasn't actually that bright.

And, mind you, anyone who felt the need to tell you as loudly as possible about their honesty, loyalty, and even-handedness was either just that earnestly dim or the scummiest, sneakiest schemers you'd ever meet. Iago was a Hufflepuff.

So he'd gone to the most forsaken hellholes he could find, hunted down the few lights of truth and justice in the region, and mugged them for their memories. Then he'd written their adventures up and taken all the credit.

It wasn't as though he was being particularly original. Wizards had been around for decades crying that Dumbledore had "collaborated" with them and run off with all the work. Funnily enough, they always seemed to cry long or loud, but not both. As for Voldemort, it was surely just a coincidence that he targeted the most ancient and knowledgeable families for recruitment, then seemed strangely uninterested in whether their heirs survived his service after the fact... "Pureblood supremacist", his bollocks, the man had wiped out more Pureblood lines than the worst dragonpox epidemic. He suspected it was just that Dumbledore had already cleaned out everyone _but_ the fellows so obsessed with purity of blood that they actually bothered to remember Mummy Dumbledore had been a Mudblood.

Thus he shored up his knowledge until he was actually a well-rounded wizard and made his name in the bargain. Oh, the publishers were dubious, but the investigators they sent all backed it up. _Everyone_ testified how brave and strong and handsome he'd been. And if they didn't, he caught the investigators on the way back to the publishers. Simple, easy, clean.

Of course, making his name required a name. A face, too, since he needed to show himself in public to show his lack of competence in person.

Now, anyone who could perform N.E.W.T.-level Transfiguration could do human Transfiguration, and his gang's lopsided study habits meant all of them could have walked off with Outstandings on the Transfiguration N.E.W.T. by fourth year - though their performance in other subjects left something to be desired. However, human Transfiguration was fraught with difficulties for any application other than cosmetic improvements or a quick getaway - the further you went from your own features, the more you risked things not going quite right when the magic dissipated. Furthermore, the Transfiguration tended to give way under stress, in response to the slightest distractions, or when hit by any of a number of not- _terribly_ -difficult spells: casting them in the first place took more comprehension of the underlying principles than most wizards could manage, but were quick and discreet if you could cast them at all. And, of course, trying to fool Gringotts was a good way to be listed as "permanently missing".

Fortunately he wasn't trying to impersonate anyone else, just _not_ to be recognized as himself. And diet and exercise - more accurately, starvation and scampering - had rendered him unrecognizable to most of the people who knew him; most had just thought of him as "the fat one", and had never paid much attention to him besides. That said... if he was going to be in the spotlight, he might as well take precautions. Besides, he had no illusions about his looks, or lack thereof. Best to give the audience what they wanted to see.

For the name, he fished out the name of a minor Pureblood family extinguished in the war: the Lockharts, who had a small business manufacturing tawdry imitations of famous goblin-wrought artifacts. That about fit the persona he would adapt. For a first name, he picked "Gilderoy" on a whim for its insinuations of gold and royalty. Wizards did love their symbolic names, and, again, it was nothing new - who believed Dumbledore had really been born with three middle names? Moreover, "Voldemort" was transparently the alias of a poor English boy grubbing at French pretensions.

The papers had even said as much near the start of the war. After the offending editorialists were found strung up by their own entrails, their colleagues grew significantly more respectful.

And so Gilderoy Lockhart had burst onto the scene, favoring everyone with his dazzling smile, bloviating about his own greatness, and botching every spell he attempted in public. He loudly and obviously lied about it being stage fright, but fooled no one; thus he established himself as the perfectly-harmless harmlessly-perfect celebrity. The public loved his books, the publishers loved his money, and the places he visited loved the ensuing revenue from tourists. Thus everyone was made happy, save for his victims.

And, quite honestly, no one in the Wizarding world would have a leg to stand on when it came to morally condemning him for that, considering that he had far fewer victims than the average Obliviator.

Money, fame, knowledge... his life lacked nothing except _dignity_.

That was why he'd applied to the Defense position at Hogwarts. He knew he'd be accepted, of course - Hogwarts had not retained a Defense Professor for over a year since 1971, and their fates could be summarized as 'your life, your reputation, or your sanity - pick two'. If Voldemort himself had shown up at the doors, Dumbledore probably would have considered him for the position. That he hadn't ended the war by forcibly appointing Voldemort to the position was, in Gilderoy's view, probable evidence Voldemort was responsible in the first place. Of course, he was biased by the observation that such a thorough and long-lasting curse had likely been placed by a powerful wizard with means, motive, and opportunity to not want anyone capable of - well - Defending against the Dark Arts.

That left the possibility that Dumbledore had done it himself to encourage Wizarding dependency on the one and only Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, but that way led to Quibbler-level conspiracy theories about Voldemort existing only as part of Dumbledore's scheme to maintain permanent control over Wizarding Britain by furnishing an immortal, indestructible adversary for the forces of Good and Justice to combat for all time. And even he, who was responsible for a conspiracy so insane even the Quibbler hadn't guessed at it, thought that was beyond absurd.

It did, however, have the _side effect_ of encouraging Wizarding dependency on the one and only Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Fixing that would weaken Dumbledore's position and also allow for earnest, concerned, _morally indignant_ questioning of why Dumbledore had not fixed the problem himself. It would also provide him an opportunity to reveal that the charming Gilderoy Lockhart was really a true hero pretending to be a fool pretending to be a true hero, which was the sort of humble gibberish the public loved.

Gilderoy allowed himself a bitter smile as he finished packing his trunk. And to think, his life had so nearly taken a different, much _lesser_ path.

It was a good thing even he miserable shreds of _his_ dignity had rallied at the thought of being some Weasley brat's pet rat.

* * *

As Gilderoy Lockhart was established as a public moron, he could freely slack off on his teaching as he searched for the anchor of the curse. He hummed to himself as he wandered about the hallways, playing with what he claimed to be a special scroll containing all of his finest prose for his own perusal. It was a testimony to his acting that no one questioned this.

In reality, he'd taken it off those little ginger bastards when they'd thought to confront him with the bloody map _he_ helped design. Mercifully enough, they hadn't recognized the name or informed any other professors - just seen fit to blackmail him with "proof Gilderoy Lockhart was a fraud".

Oh, those little shites had no idea. They were lucky they'd just gotten off with waking up in the morning with the memory of Professor Lockhart sneaking up behind them and confiscating the map as a potential Dark artifact. Considering that he'd escaped by a hair's breadth playing "Seven Minutes in Heaven" with a Dementor, he'd been generous beyond belief.

On the other hand, they'd delivered the map to him, so perhaps they'd earned a bit of generosity. Forgetting about the map had been a humiliating mistake, but the sheer luck of them retrieving _that_ from Filch's office and _spontaneously_ working out the password was indecent. How bored would one even have to be to steal a blank piece of parchment and mutter nonsense over it in the hopes that it might turn out to be magical?

So far, he'd swept Gryffindor Tower on a "surprise celebrity visit", pontificated at the Ravenclaw locking device until it caved under the force of sheer boredom and let him in, and politely asked the Hufflepuffs if he could come in to sweep their rooms for a suspected Dark object. Nerve-wracking, truly. All those open, wide-eyed little faces, so _helpful_ and _earnest_... if he went off alone with one of them, they'd never find his body...

Ahem. Slytherin had proven technically easier, as he'd just scouted via his Animagus form like the old days, but the large area the dungeons covered proved more difficult to search. He also had acquired a grudge against Millicent Bulstrode and her damned cat.

All of that had turned up... nothing. Oh, he'd confiscated a few illicit items, but love potions and Fanged Frisbees were not anchoring the curse on the Defense position. He'd also searched all the hidden tunnels (and turned up a few couples sneaking out for a romantic rendezvous) and still found nothing. He'd even searched the obvious places and found nothing... including the Headmaster's office, which had turned up a number of odd surveillance devices before Dumbledore narrowed his eyes and coolly instructed the Defense professor to cease disturbing delicate equipment with his unsubtle spellwork.

For one heart-stopping moment, he thought he'd been found out and Dumbledore tolerated him only for some inscrutable purpose of his own. But Dumbledore seemed oblivious, and his Occlumency techniques worked as well as they had in the Order - though he had swapped out a "darkest secret" of a penchant for naturist giantesses for his private stash of Veela-on-Veela action, just in case Dumbledore remembered. It was funny to watch the greatest Legilimens in England cringe and retreat from his mind... only to leave the _actual_ secrets hidden behind his photographic pornographic memory untouched.

But he digressed. It wasn't him, so who was Dumbledore monitoring? Snivellus? He was the one it would be sensible to monitor. Harry? He was the perplexing one, so, thinking back to Dumbledore's management during the war... probably.

Harry, Harry, Harry... Dear, dear, Harry. He felt a bit guilty about being responsible for the boy being an orphan, but - his wry thought at the time that, if the prophecy's bizarre wording had any validity, the boy would somehow "vanquish" Voldemort had proven true. As his subsequent several-year screw-up had demonstrated, he had not expected that. Praise be to Merlin that Sirius had gone after him rather than informing anyone of the true situation, but, considering that he'd actually fallen for his 'The Red Book of Westmarch is an authentic account of ancient history' gag back in seventh year, it shouldn't have been surprising...

At any rate, the official word was that Harry was being kept hidden somewhere in the Muggle world for his own safety whenever he wasn't at Hogwarts, and he'd had a sheltered childhood, watched over by his protective guardians and freed from the cares of his celebrity. Wonderful - now explain why Harry, aside from his physical features, looked far less like James, who had _actually_ enjoyed a sheltered, carefree childhood, and far more like Snivellus.

He didn't so much care about the boy as he cared about the possibility of Dumbledore lying through his teeth about a celebrity who was still young and cute enough to be inoffensive to the men and bring out the maternal instincts of the women. If he could prove the man was somehow complicit in the boy's maltreatment soon, before Harry went through puberty and became more envied than beloved... well, _that_ would be a scandal, now wouldn't it?

It wasn't, however, the proverbial sword hanging over his head by a thread. He shook his head, deactivating the map and stashing the parchment inside his robes, as he walked on. He could continue sweeping, but he had a feeling it wasn't in any place accessible to the public. If it had been, the old gang probably would have stumbled across it accidentally, incorporated it into their newest project without really knowing what it was, and been surprised when the Defense professor spontaneously turned purple with pink polka-dots, ballooned to three times his normal size, and begun vomiting live tadpoles.

Confound and...

He heard a shriek, and his head snapped around to look in its direction. Going against his natural instinct and bolting _towards_ the scene rather than _away_ from it, he put up defensive spells as he ran, arriving at the scene with enough magical protection to stymie a dragon.

For all that, it was rather anticlimatic. A message written in blood - he'd seen enough of those during the war, call him back when it was joined-up writing done in intestines - and a dead cat. HOORAY! Er - that was, it was either some idiot Slytherin's first attempt at being a Dark wizard or a slight escalation of the usual pranks. It was Halloween, after all, and a bit of melodrama was expected. For all he knew, the cat might not even be a cat, but a Transfigured fur hat.

 _THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE._

Definitely an idiot Slytherin.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So, basically, there never _was_ a Gilderoy Lockhart in this AU, and Pettigrew decided to construct a new identity rather than remaining in hiding.

I don't have any inspiration to continue this at the moment, as the inside of Pettigrew's head is a sleazy place to be. Couldn't decide whether he would succeed in a warped 'villain wins' ending or be brought down just when he had vanquished all his enemies, either. (I suppose the most appropriate ending would be for him to take Harry as his 'apprentice' for the sake of publicity, influence, and his own egotism, reap the benefits of playing it up in public for years, and be backstabbed at the height of his power by dear young Harry, who learned much more than Pettigrew ever intended and learned it well.)


	8. (HBP) Surgito! Surgito!

**Author's Note** : Note: no actual spoilers for The Crimes of Grindelwald save for the existence of this spell. (I was... dubious about the movie, personally, but the _spell_ is useful.)

* * *

"Surgito! Surgito!"

"What is Professor McGonagall doing?" Harry whispered to Hermione as their Head of House went down the line of students, jabbing her wand at each and snapping out the unknown spell. So far, it hadn't produced any special results.

"Really? You don't know, Harry? I'm shocked you haven't read about it, I-" She was cut off as a third-year boy gave a violent start and a red mist rose from him; Harry's wand was immediately in his hand, and only Hermione's hand on his arm stopped him from casting a Shield Charm reflexively. The mist did nothing more threatening than form a giant heart over his head, but Professor McGonagall looked thunderously angry and separated him from the rest of the group, seating him in a chair she conjured on the spot. A third-year girl bolted from the line-up, and was immediately restrained with conjured ropes. Her lips pressed into a thin white line, the professor returned to the third-years.

"What was that?" Harry asked Hermione in a low voice, unsure of what he was seeing. The boy was looking about blearily, as though he'd just awoken from a long dream.

"A counterspell for weak enchantments, specialized to Love Potions in particular," Hermione whispered back. "With the risk of Death Eaters, the Hogwarts administration has probably decided they need to screen for enchantments."

"Would it cure the Imperius?"

"No - unless it was an extremely weak Imperius - but it would be much easier to obtain love potions than to master the Imperius," Hermione responded, watching the professor proceed. A third-year girl went to sit beside the boy, but no one ran this time. Professor McGongall spoke to her briefly in a low, soothing voice, then straightened and snarled something under her breath. Harry, listening closely, thought it was something like 'I will speak to Filius about this'.

Harry had to agree it was much easier, considering what he had seen in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. "Are the two really comparable?"

"It's a compulsion that impairs judgement, clouds the mind, and makes the giver the most important person in the world to the victim," Hermione said in a low voice. "Don't you think that would be enough for some people?"

Harry grimaced. He would have to have... a talk with Fred and George. A very serious talk...

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Yeah, The Crimes of Grindelwald has a spell that instantly cures Love Potioning. You'd think fanfiction, home of the uber-popular Love Potion Plot, would have seized on that immediately...

And now for applications, each taking place in a _separate_ alternate universe.

* * *

 **Omake I (Ginny-bashing):**

The guilty panicked as Professor McGonagall came closer to their target. Harry had learned that quickly as the professor called up each year in turn and went down the line one-by-one.

What he hadn't expected was Ginny Weasley panicking.

It did no more good than any of the other prior flight attempts, and she collapsed to the floor. His muscles moving of their own volition, Harry found himself surging to her side. "There's got to be some mistake!" he insisted as Professor McGonagall's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Ginny would never do anything like this! The Weasleys aren't that sort of -"

" _Surgito!_ "

The adrenaline that had pumped through his veins a moment before seemed suddenly to be somewhere else; Harry sagged as his vision clouded over with a pink mist that shortly cleared. He groaned. It was as though he'd awoken from an enchanting dream, but one that had been somehow nauseating...

"Mr. Potter, you should take a seat until your head clears." A hand took him by the upper arm, and he stumbled blindly into the seat indicated for him. He felt like the time when he was eight that Dudley had kicked him in the head. Why did he feel like that?

His mind began to clear, and with comprehension came horror...

* * *

 **Omake II (Molly-bashing, mild Ginny-bashing):**

"Yeah, Professor McGonagall's been taking really good care of us," Ginny said to her family as they sat around the dinner table. Harry nodded, unable to concur due to his full mouth. He'd heard from Luna that Professor Flitwick had been screening his own students, and he and Professor McGonagall had unhappily traded reports of Ravenclaw-Gryffindor (and, to Harry's shame, Gryffindor-Ravenclaw) Potioning cases. Of course, that had been far from the only sort of inter-House Potioning: all the Houses seemed to be rife with the practice, having evaded punishment only by lack of inspection until now. "She taught us a spell to detect -"

Without further delay, she whipped out her wand and pointed it at Bill. " _Surgito!_ "

Nothing happened. Bill looked surprised, then long-suffering, and Fleur did an astonishing job of conveying withering contempt with her eyes alone. Ginny stared at them for a long moment, then settled down in her seat. "Sorry," she muttered.

"Ginny, I'm a Curse-Breaker..." he groaned, rubbing at his temples. "Do you really think neither I nor my colleagues would routinely check for enchantments?"

Fleur looked as though she were considering some very _eenteresting_ things to say to her future sister-in-law, and holding back solely for her fiance's sake. Harry stared at the ceiling, wishing he'd rather be anywhere but here. Well, Fred and George had seemed to feel the same way whenever he was in the same room after their _serious discussion_ , so perhaps this was just karma.

"Well - it's good to check anyway," Ginny said defensively. "Look, it doesn't do any harm! We might as well check each other anyway - _Surgito! Surgito!_ "

Harry felt the brief tingling of the spell, but it soon passed through him as he found nothing. Hermione similarly came up clean, as well as Ron, and -

"Ginny! Ginny, stop this nonsense _this instant!_ "

"It doesn't do _any_ harm, Mum, Professor McGonagall said so!" Ginny protested as she swept her wand around the table. " _Surgito! Surgito!_ _Sur-_ "

She halted, mouth open, as a red mist began to rise from Mr. Weasley.

* * *

 **Omake III:**

" _Surgito!_ " Harry cried, pointing his wand at Ron, and his friend jerked and twitched as the red mist rose from his skin and formed the telltale heart above his head. Ron stumbled backwards onto his bed and sat there in a daze, gawping as though he hoped to catch a fly. Harry, whose ear still hurt rather badly from Ron's punch, would not have been adverse to a fly popping into existence just to take him up on the invitation.

Soon enough, of course, Ron properly came to. His face first paled, then flushed red. "Oh, I'm going to introduce myself to her, all right," he growled, getting to his feet and pounding a fist into his open hand. A moment later, he looked guiltily at Harry. "Sorry about that, by the way."

"It's all right," Harry said, forcing himself to believe that. "You were potioned, after all."

"Potion or no potion, I was being a prat..." Ron heaved a heavy sigh. "And I'm a prefect, aren't I? I've got to set a good example to the rest." He sounded as though he were forcing himself to believe it. "I guess I'll just turn her in to Professor McGonagall, then. We've got the rest of the box for proof."

"Yeah," Harry said, picking the offending box up as though it might bite him. He might have gotten Fred and George to desist in selling Love Potions, but he supposed he'd still have to deal with the potions already in circulation... To say nothing of any home-brewed potions. Slughorn had taught NEWT-level students to brew Amortentia, after all - and what had he been _thinking?_

As it turned out, he would never get the chance to ask. That afternoon, a seventh-year Ravenclaw entered Slughorn's office seeking career advice, and rushed out screaming and crying for help a moment later; unfortunately, by the time she had entered the office, it had already been hours too late. Eyes bulging, face suffused with blood, tongue black and protruding, there could be no doubt: Professor Slughorn was dead.


	9. (ASOIAF) Ron of ThronesGame of Grimaces

**Author's Note:** Extremely short sketches of two ideas that have been bouncing around in my brain. One's not an HP fic, but it might be amusing anyway.

The usual handwave that Westerosi speak English applies.

The reason this isn't getting written should be pretty obvious: I have no coherent plot, only a few random notions. It's a mess, and solely based around the idea that OP!Harry getting tossed into Westeros is _major_ overkill when _any_ Wizarding character in Westeros is enough to knock the continent off its axis.

* * *

 **Snippets from the likely-never-to-be-written** **A Ron of Thrones**

At least he hadn't Splinched himself. Considering what a hurry he'd been in to get away from those Snatchers, that was a ruddy good thing.

It might be the only good thing, Ron reflected as he toyed with the Deluminator, hoping to have _some_ idea of what to do. He couldn't Apparate anywhere, he hadn't the foggiest where in England he was, and he was stranded in a freakishly... _rural_ area. Right, that was the polite way of putting it. The frank way was that he was stuck in some horrid backwater that looked more like something out of the Middle Ages than the Muggle settlements he'd seen through his contact with Harry.

The thought of Harry and Hermione, stuck out there somewhere in a miserable tent without a clue, ate at him. 'Course, they were probably getting on just fine without him... _It's the opportunity they've been waiting for all their lives_ , a certain voice whispered at the back of his mind; the Horcrux had stirred it up, but it had been there long before he ever heard of Tom Riddle. He flicked the Deluminator again and looked at his feet. He'd never had the words to argue with it, not least because he had a terrible feeling it was true.

So... what, then? Would he end up at the back end of civilization for the rest of his life, never knowing anything about the war or what happened to anyone else? His wand still worked, but he had no way of contacting other wizards - save violating the Statute of Secrecy and waiting for the Obliviators to show up, but that was a cure worse than the disease. He didn't know the spells that could help him get his bearings - Hermione would've, but...

He scuffed at the ground. It would have been awfully nice if the older members of the Order had bothered teaching the junior members that little trick with the talking Patronus, eh? Alas, they hadn't. So he was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck...

There was one final option, of course. Asking the Muggles which way it was to the next big city, and... _walking_.

How long could it be?

* * *

A long, long way.

He'd... er, _persuaded_ a Confunded Muggle into giving him an old mule for free and hitched a ride on that. To where, he wasn't sure. These people were so rustic they didn't even know what London was. The most he'd gotten out of them was directions towards Kingslanding, which must be some old port city or something he'd never heard of. It was unsurprising, considering how primitive this entire area was - not one sign of Muggle artifacts the whole way. Must be the sort of place time forgot.

They _looked_ bad, too. Everyone was short and stunted - it reminded him disturbingly of the way Harry'd looked when he first came to Hogwarts, though good Hogwarts cooking had fixed that right up. They were dirty, they stank, they barely bothered to wave away flies... Honestly, some of them looked like the flies weren't fussed that they were _technically_ still alive. The only people who looked all right were the rare pompous-looking sorts wearing bright colors and swaggering about with the air of rich bullies or the henchmen thereof. Even they didn't have the standard of cleanliness and well-treatment of the humblest firstie at Hogwarts.

The whole place profoundly creeped him out. The faster he could get to a city that might be able to point him in the _direction_ of London, the better. At least from there he might be able to get the jump on a Ministry employee and start finding out what had gone on - to say nothing of why Apparation had ceased to work.

Until then... Thank Merlin for Cushioning Charms. If it weren't for those, this ride on this mule would be a whole lot less pleasant.

* * *

If the numerous mishaps over his time with Harry hadn't tipped him off, he had rotten luck.

So he'd walked into an inn (not understanding why the Muggles were all giving it a wide berth), only to find... Well, he could be excused for thinking they were Death Eaters. It seemed likelier than Muggles preying on their own sort, and he could have sworn the bastard at the forefront of it was part troll.

In retrospect, he should have found it odd they were flaunting knockoff Gryffindor regalia than knockoff Slytherin regalia, but Wormtail had proven Gryffindors could be Death Eaters too. At the time, Ron had been a bit more focused on what they were doing to that poor Muggle girl.

So: he'd caught them unawares and he'd caught them in the act. The odds were absurd, but damnit, he had to do _something._

One hastily-cast Shield Charm and a bunch of Stunners later, he'd thought he'd discovered that, much like the Snatchers that went after him, the sort of thugs that traveled in packs did so because they weren't competent enough to handle any one victim on their own. Honestly, they'd gone for him without even getting their wands out. What sort of Death Eaters were they?

They weren't, as it turned out. So he learned when the Muggle innkeeper, far from being grateful, went completely mental at the thought of what the Bannisters (or something like that) would do to him once they heard their men were assassinated on his premises. Ron had tried to point out they weren't quite dead, but that only worsened the man's breakdown as he proceeded to speculate what the men would do once they woke up. See, apparently these thugs weren't acting _against_ the law of the land, they _were_ the law of the land. In a sick way, it was almost good to know that Muggles were just as bad as wizards, but...

Long story short, that was how he'd ended up swearing to the man and his daughter (who spent the conversation curled up in a ball in the corner) that _of course_ he'd protect them from any bigshot retaliation, being Ronald Weasley, great wizard, equal of any ten Muggles and then some. Odds were, of course, that the Obliviators would eventually catch wind of this whole thing, he'd end up at the Ministry in a different condition than he'd like, and the innkeeper's family would face a horrible fate.

If it came to that, maybe he ought to break the Statute of Secrecy for good. Seemed to him that the Muggle higher-ups and the Death Eaters deserved each other.

* * *

Life was bollocks.

The good news: the Statute of Secrecy wasn't smashed, at least not in the way he thought it would be.

The bad news: he really wasn't in England. Or Britain. Or even in the same universe, possibly. He'd _really_ botched that Apparation.

The perverse news: he'd ended up as the celebrity he'd always dreamed of being. It was too bad that he'd managed that as a single man in rebellion against the king. Damned straight he was in rebellion, he wasn't going to put up with a bunch of raping lunatics being allowed to run rampant. (The _particular_ batch of raping lunatics were now seven feet under - he'd wrestled with that decision, but the choice between letting them walk as freely as the Death Eaters had and putting an end to their ravages... hadn't been much of a choice.) It was just very... inconvenient that those lunatics happened to work for the king's wife's family.

Said family seemed quite peeved that he'd taken out their main enforcer. At least, that was what Ron had gathered from the people who had shown up looking for said enforcer, then (after he'd bluntly told the first lot what was what) later shown up to avenge said enforcer. Them, he'd knocked out and deposited some ways away until they took the hint. If they tried to take out their anger at their humiliation on nearby people, they were dealt with accordingly. It turned his stomach, but this was apparently how things were done around these parts. You could show off all the invincibility you liked (thank Merlin for Shield Charms), but unless you knocked off some louts, they wouldn't take you seriously in the slightest... and then innocent people would get done in instead. Real pity they were Muggles, Ron thought darkly, they and the Death Eaters could have gotten on _fabulously_.

So here he was, holed up in an inn and telling the powers-that-were to go bugger off. The morbid curiosity had brought customers, at least, albeit ones who didn't want to get their names taken down lest the authorities start rounding up sympathizers. (Again - almost like home.) He'd even gotten a thank-you message from some lesser prince or other... along with a request for the head of that half-troll-looking sort, that had vaguely creeped him out. Well, who was he to judge? He'd been the one who executed the bastard, after all, and he had no right to talk about honor after killing an unarmed captive. So off the messenger had happily went with the dirt-covered, wormy head of the exhumed monster, and off Ron had gone to think about the direction of his life.

He didn't have much of a choice - he had to stick to this, or everyone with whom he'd dealt was going to get it the moment they didn't have him to protect them. It wasn't as though he had anything better to do, since he'd no guarantee he would get back to _his_ original universe if he stopped mucking around with returning to a specific location and tried to force Apparation by attempting another purely-blind desperate jump. If he wasn't doing this - what would he be doing? Wandering the countryside, filching food from hapless Muggles, and repeating the aimless camping trip with even _less_ purpose?

Given that such a fate was the alternative, maybe he'd wound up in this world as a peculiar sort of Hell for running off on Harry and Hermione. Merlin knew he sometimes thought he deserved one. Merlin also knew he'd like a bit of guidance on how he might go about making it right.

Well... if things didn't improve soon, he wondered if he might be better off convincing the innkeeper's family (and the rest of the motley group that had fallen under his protection) to pull up stakes and head for the capital. Better to take the fight to them before they took more of the fight to him, eh? If people thought he was trying to seize the throne, maybe he ought to prove them right.

He had a simple plan for doing it, too... well, doing it _literally_. He'd been trying to cast Muggle-repelling spells by imitating Hermione, and he thought he was making some progress. So: would their entire throne room fit within a single cast of a Muggle-repelling enchantment? Unless it was bloody big, he bet it would...

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I basically have two actual scenes in my head for this: Ron stumbling across a Gregor gang-rape and immediately stopping it, and the population of the Red Keep in a tizzy and trying to find the "sorcerous infiltrator" while Ron, comfortably hidden by Muggle-repelling wards, is snoozing on the Iron Throne. The rest is an attempt to duct-tape that into some semblance of a plot.

We know from Crabbe and Goyle that _anyone_ can learn to cast Disillusionment Charms and Ron certainly can cast Shield Charms, which are never shown to be penetrable by mundane projectiles. Hence Ron can run around, invisible and invincible, under any circumstances not including wildfire, shadowbabies, or other such rare occurrences. Heck, there's probably grounds for a ruling that a Patronus could chase off a shadowbaby. He's still vulnerable to poison, which could either provide an easy end to the plot or be waved off with 'wizards can survive Muggle poisons due to their natural magic, though they'll feel quite rotten while recuperating' and/or 'Ron's wandering around filching food rather than eating a meal prepared for him, so it's hard to poison _him_ in particular'.

Giving this an actual plot beyond 'Ron barges face-first into random parts of Westeros' would either lean on Ron ending up in charge of a bunch of smallfolk (whom he would have to protect, lending tension) or hasten to Ron's first encounter with an ASOIAF-style mage, whether Bloodraven running recruitment schemes or Melisandre declaring him Azoron Ahai, frequently found between heaps of salted pork and smoked fish. ASOIAF's inclination towards blood magic probably wouldn't even surprise Ron by then - if the lot's ruled by a bunch of Muggle Death Eaters, where's the shock in the few actual wizards doing a fair job of aping the _real_ Death Eaters?

And now for the non-HP ASOIAF idea.

* * *

 **A brief segment from** **A** **Game of Grimaces**

The hunger had driven him mad.

At least, that was why he _presumed_ he was being deluged with hallucinations of vividly-colored text informing him that he was playing the Siege Scenario of Westeros: The Video Game. Streaks of color hung before his eyes, informing him that his 'Health' and 'Stamina' were low. Well, yes, the gnawing pains and weakness had already told him that. And yes, he knew morale was near-nonexistent. With the shadow of cannibalism casting a miserable pall over proceedings, of course it would be.

He allowed himself a bitter smile as the latest phantasm of inane text informed him that he had just had the stroke of good luck to get the Smuggler Event, giving him the option to refill his food stocks to near-full in exchange for an exorbitant sum of money. Very well then. He would humor it. He nodded his head towards where he hallucinated a rectangle labeled **Accept** \- not on his life would he do so towards the rectangle labeled **Refuse** , no man could eat gold dragons - and sat back in his chair, trying to fight off the thoughts of what roast traitor might taste like.

There came a knock on the door. "Yes?" he said, grateful to be spared from his own thoughts.

"Milord," came a trembling voice, "you will not believe this..."

* * *

He had gone mad.

That, or he'd taken to some variety of sorcery. Since he couldn't imagine one stumbled across such things by sheer chance and accident, the madness was likely.

At least it was a pleasant madness. He had survived the war. He had "failed to complete all objectives of the Naval Combat Scenario", as the hallucinations had so pithily put it, but he was alive. He had not turned cannibal. That was enough, his petulant brother be d... deluged with great joy and prosperity for all his days. That was the pious thing to say.

On the downside, he was now stuck with Dragonstone. That might be more tolerable if the madness was not bothering him with **Suggested Quests** to go looking for buried Targaryen treasure. To shut it up, he'd instead taken to the _other_ suggestion of exercise - or, as it put it, **Grinding STR levels**. It did admittedly help him recover from his trial of starvation and forced inactivity.

Yes, the madness had its benefits. Under its goading, he had learned High Valyrian, read texts on engineering, fought off ambushes from wild animals with his bare hands (and how did Dragonstone have so many? Did the earth vomit them forth on a regular basis?), gone on long walks along the shore, and practiced competent administration. History would regard him as a capable eccentric, at least. He would see to that. If the hallucinations ever started to suggest that men were conspiring against him and he ought to burn them alive for 3000 EXP, _then_ he would fall on his sword.

If only it would stop telling him to practice his Speechcraft... he didn't _need_ to become some perfumed flatterer! He would not bow to the pointless demands of -

 **Grinding Teeth leveled up!**

He wished he knew how to rid himself of _that_ particular delusion. He swore he received it on a weekly basis.

(When his brother came to visit, he amended that sentiment. Weekly? Mayhaps _daily_ was more appropriate.)

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Stannis the Gamer, alternately opposed to the more 'gamey' directions in which his ability attempts to push him and convinced it's all madness brought on by his starvation during the Siege of Storm's End.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a plot beyond 'Stannis grinds for several years and then causes canon to fall apart at the seams'. There's the utter-crack approach of Stannis grinding Speechcraft to 100 and inadvertently talking Robert off the throne, there's the oddball super!Stannis approach of him stumbling into the quest-line to hatch a dragon, there's the parody approach of Stannis accidentally clipping into a debug chamber of Dragonstone, etc. I suppose the most straight-faced version is ditching the usual RPG mechanics, have Stannis's Gamer abilities pertain to medieval strategy games, and end up with him only being a _political and economic_ demigod.

Mostly the concept was having the character least likely to enjoy video games be forced to experience reality as one. Don't know if that could be stretched to fill an entire oneshot, though.


	10. Chapter 10

**Obligatory Marriage Law Snippet  
**

 **Author's Note** : Banged out on a whim.

* * *

Hermione sat on the steps, looking down at her feet. Footsteps alerted her to someone else coming down the stairs, and soon Harry was sitting down beside her.

"Was it really too much to ask?" she murmured. He patted her on the back.

"No, I think it was brilliant of you." He paused. "Aside from the bits in invisible ink. That was cruel."

"I didn't ask anything unreasonable," she muttered. "All I _said_ in the invisible ink on those marriage contracts was that my husband ought to respect me as an intelligent human being rather than a pack-horse or a brood-mare. I didn't even ask for love, Harry. Just that he not privately regard me as a legally-bound slave. Is that so wrong?"

Harry shrugged. "Was it so wrong that, in the marriage contracts you customized for me, you put in that clause about my wife needing to _not_ plan to use me as nothing more than a bank account, source of reflected glory, or imminent source of inheritance?"

She looked up at him. "I don't think so. A significant proportion of the Pureblood population of Great Britain might disagree, though."

"To Hell with them. Neville signed his contract with Hannah without a hitch. If those custom contracts you stuffed into the system didn't get him, that's proof positive that _decent_ Pureblood wizards and witches can get through them all right."

She sighed. "Do you think we'll ever be able to go back to England?"

He snorted. "We'd be the only people in the world who _want_ to go back to England. Magical England, at any rate. The only people who are staying in are either Purebloods or can't get out."

"You're right, of course," she said after a long pause. Looking up at the ceiling, she added, "It's just a pity that _they_..."

"Don't think about _them_ ," he said forcefully, standing up, and offered her a hand up from the steps. "We're better off without false friends. My dad's example proved that well."

She swallowed hard, nodded, and took his hand. "That's true... I just have to remember that." She took a deep breath. "No matter what."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** As stated in Goblet of Fire, knowledge and consent are totally unnecessary for magical contracts.

Actually, come to think of it, you could make a custom Death Note by Goblet of Fire rulings. Just write out that the undersigned agree not to breathe on penalty of death, sign up all the Death Eaters, voila.


	11. Talks with Trelawney

**Author's Note:** The start of an idea, but one that needs more plot before it can hit oneshot length.

* * *

It was said that professors loved to talk with students about something _other_ than homework. For that reason, Sybill Trelawney was delighted to see Harry Potter in her office. The boy had never suffered for lack of output in her course - even if his accuracy could use some work - and he was such an excellent Object for divination. Perhaps she could ascertain some great event in his future?

He sat down, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "Professor Trelawney," he began. "I -" He frowned and stared down at his shoes. Sybill had never had much success with divination-via-shoelaces, herself. Just when a pair was getting nice and frayed enough to be worth inspecting, they were usually so unpleasant-looking that she hadn't the heart to delay replacing them any longer.

"Yes, Mr. Potter?" she prompted when he didn't go on. "I understand that silence is conducive to the workings of the Inner Eye, but even the greatest Seers must convey their visions."

He squared his shoulders and looked up at her. "Professor Trelawney - would you - please, can you keep this a secret? This - I'm not talking about this for class."

Sybill peered more closely at him. Oh, this was getting interesting! "Of course, Mr. Potter," she said, meaning every word. "I understand that the secrets of the future, sometimes, are not meant for mundane ears."

The boy made a funny face at that, but he sighed and nodded. "This - this summer... I had a dream."

Sybill stroked her lip. "And you believe it to have been a prophetic one?"

"I... No, not precisely. I..." The boy let out another deep sigh. "Is it possible for someone to see something taking place miles away... many miles away? I don't know how far - That's not the point. Is it possible for someone to see - to have a vision of something happening at a distance _while_ it's happening?"

Sitting back, Sybill folded her hands and gazed at the ceiling. "Such is uncommon... but not unknown..." she hedged. "Yes... Yes, I do think so. Of course, there are prophecies describing events which have just occurred, and following with events yet to come... but that is not quite the same thing... Would you please elaborate?"

Potter took a deep breath. "I - I had this dream. Voldemort -"

She flinched. He looked irked - Well, let him, the silly boy! _He_ would be just fine if the Taboo came back! But what about _her_? What would _she_ do if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named arrived back, furious at her daring to utter his "exalted" name?! Him and Dumbledore, what a pair...

"As I was saying," he said, sounding frustrated, "he and a servant were talking in front of a fireplace. There... there was a snake..." His annoyed expression became a grimace. "Also, Professor... is it possible that... in true visions, does it ever happen that you... you change places? Sometime, I thought I was - well, that I was seeing through _his_ eyes... and other times, I was the - I mean, I was _looking_ at things through the snake..."

"I don't know, I've never had-" Sitting bolt upright, she corrected herself. "I have never had visions _of that sort._ Has it happened? I am sure. There are records of Seers seeing multiple times and places in one vision, and that wouldn't happen if they were stuck in just one perspective, now would it?"

"It was the same time and place, though," he added. "I'd just kind of... drift."

Unease roiled her stomach. It was not auspicious for him to be seeing a dream through the eyes of monsters, whether bodily human or wholly bestial... "Go on," she said, nonetheless. "I sense there is more."

"They were talking about someone they killed," Potter elaborated. "I - I don't know who. I heard the name at the time, then - it was already gone once I woke up. I... I think it might have been a woman's name, but I'm not sure."

"I find that writing down my dreams helps," Sybill said pleasantly. "It does, of course, take time to require, but it is most rewarding... The enhancement of recall acts to sharpen the Inner Eye most thoroughly..." Except when even she couldn't decode her dreams... and would be better off forgetting them. To this day she had no idea why she'd once had the most vivid dream of Dumbledore breaking into her house, dressed in nothing but a ducky inner tube and bright pink socks, and pursuing her across Europe. And then it had all turned out to be part of a song-and-dance routine in which he reenacted the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, with "Juliet" played by the Nurmengard-bound Grindelwald, as the climax of a dark rite to conquer the world. And... no, she really didn't have any idea what _that_ dream meant...

"You'll forgive me for not writing down the first dream I ever _had_ like this," the boy said curtly, breaking her out of her reverie. A moment later, he looked abashed. "I'm - I'm sorry, Professor. It's just that - it's just that this has been really troubling me..."

"It's all right," she assured him. "The awakening of the Inner Eye is a terrible burden to bear. But, alas, we must shoulder it because we have been gifted with greatness, where lesser souls could never endure..."

"Yes, yes, Professor," he said hastily. "And - once they stopped talking about her - him? I don't remember - they started talking about how they planned to kill _me_."

She perked up. "Indeed?"

"They - I think there was something about a servant at Hogwarts," he said, staring at the wood of her desk as though he hoped to divine the missing details in the whorls. An admirable idea. "And - there was an old man who came into the room, and - and they killed him." He took a breath. "And then Voldemort - he turned around, and -" Potter shuddered. "I can't remember what he looked like," he said. "I think I was in the snake then. But, whatever he was - it was so horrible that - that I woke up." His hand went to his forehead. "And my scar hurt," he added. "It hurt like you wouldn't believe."

"Your scar?" she repeated.

"Yeah. I think part of why I can't remember details is that it hurt so badly I couldn't think of anything else for a bit," he added, rubbing at his forehead as though trying to massage away phantom pain. "By the time I was thinking about _what_ I saw, half of it was gone."

She leaned forward and frowned at him. "Why do you believe this was a vision of true events, and not a symbolic one?"

"I - I'm not a very symbolic sort of person, Professor." Potter shifted in his chair. "I care about what's in front of me, mostly. Poetry just - well - seems like rubbish. No offense if you like it."

In fairness, some poetry _was_ rubbish... there was some she'd written when she was fifteen, in particular, that ought to be their own Unforgivable - Sybill hastily pushed those thoughts aside and focused on Potter. " _You_ may not be, but the _Inner Eye_ loves to speak in metaphor and symbol," she corrected. "I am afraid that's quite consistent across all cultures. Visitations from greater powers, abstract visions with concrete consequences, signs and wonders and symbols beyond mortal comprehension... it's all there. Sight beyond sight translates into terms our own limited minds can comprehend-"

He was impatiently nodding. "This was _very_ concrete, Professor."

"It was?" She tilted her head. "Then what about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? There - Well, there are _rumors_ he survived, but do you truly think-"

" _Yes_."

She sat back, blinking. That was the most certain Potter had been about anything in this entire conversation. "You... you seem most convinced of that," she said, playing for time to collect her thoughts. "Have you had prior vis-"

"Professor, I have _seen_ him," Potter said, leaning forward across the desk. "I - You'd better not discuss this in class, you hear me? I mean - I - don't think it would be that great an idea. Sorry." His boyish deference disappeared again, and his eyes blazed with a fire that shocked her. "I have _seen_ him. I have _touched_ him. He has tried to kill me. Multiple times." He paused; those intense green eyes stared at her - no, _through_ her. As though she wasn't even _there_. "You think I'm mad, don't you?" he said, as simply as though he were remarking on the weather. "Admit it."

"I..." She wavered. The Inner Eye told her how to answer, though even she initially balked at it. "No. I don't think you're mad." She took a deep and shaky breath, her voice being forced onwards by an inner passion. "I ought to think you're mad, but I don't think you're mad. I think you really have seen him. I think-" What was she _saying?_ "I think you have faced him, and he's tried to kill you, and you've survived. Each time, you've survived." She blinked rapidly, her eyes dry and stinging, and felt very queer. "But there has been death, hasn't there? Each time - death. I see it thick upon you. Yes - death, between the two of you. One day, it must certainly claim one of you, but which one..."

Sybill braced her elbows on the desk and rested her face in her hands, rubbing at her eyes. She felt rather poorly. Had she not been with a student, she might have begged off and gone to lie down for a while; as it was, she was tempted to do so anyway. On the other hand, rising might make her nauseated. Perhaps it was best to sit still for a bit.

When she felt well enough to look up again, the boy was staring at her. He seemed about to say something, then only nodded.

She polished her glasses off on her robes, then put them back on. She really ought to go find the tinted pair. She could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on - one of the bad ones. "Excuse me," she said, steadying her voice. "We were talking about your vision. You believed -" Oh, what _had_ he said? It did no credit to the Inner Eye when her mind went foggy like this. "That your vision was real? You had strong reason to believe?"

"When... when I've met him, before, my scar hurt," Potter said. He was looking at her with a level of respect she'd never seen before in his eyes... Oh, why couldn't he do this when she was feeling _better_? "That's how it hurt when I woke up."

"Might it just be association?" she murmured, rubbing at her eyes again. "That is to say - it hurt because you are _accustomed_ to it hurting every time you see him?"

"I'm used to seeing things that hurt me," the boy said dryly. "Somehow, the sight never hurt like _that_."

It took her several seconds to dredge up the correct thought. "Do you know - is there a link between you? A magical one? As master and servant-"

" _No_ ," Potter said, horrified but emphatic.

"Sorry, sorry - but my meaning was... er, that is to say... a House-Elf can hear its master's call, no matter where, no matter under what circumstances. So, I mean to say, not the _exact_ connection, but a similar one... Was he calling to you? Did he request a servant's aid?"

"No and no."

"Might it be that, by _invoking_ you as he discussed your murder, he summoned your attention-"

"I don't know. Possibly." The boy looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "No, he was talking about entirely different things at first. The Quidditch World Cup..."

 _"Quidditch?_ " For a moment, she was certain this _was_ the boy's dream - he was, after all, an obsessive and reputedly skilled player of that dreadful sport - then recalled that wasn't so absurd at all. There had been that horrid incident that made all the papers... "You believe he was behind that monstrous revelery?"

"I don't know. Again - maybe." The boy spread his hands. "I've _never had anything like this happen before_. It's why I'm asking you. I just - I want to know what's causing it. What I do next time. If there's anything I can do to stop him from killing - more people." His voice was tight.

She rested her forehead on one hand. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter, I truly do not know... You will forgive me if I have never experienced, nor heard, of the sort of magic that connects you and the Dark Lord..." A magic soaked in death and blood, the Ouroboros, devouring its own tail...

"You don't have _any_ idea about what could make me see through his eyes?"

He was frustrated. Unlike the many other people who had been frustrated with her throughout her life, she thought he had every right. "It is possible," she said, the words seeming a bit hard to grasp at the moment, "that you have some sort of specialized gift of Sight centered only around him, forged the night he killed your parents and failed t kill you. It is also possible - please do not take offense - that you are, in some sense, soulmates -"

"NO."

"I mean no offense, none whatsoever," she said, shutting her eyes and waving her free hand in the air. "Not in a romantic sense, but that is to say your souls are somehow attuned, somehow intertwined, somehow-"

" _NO._ "

Well now. Oh, why were normal people so _sensitive?_ That was why so many Seers' lives were doomed to tragedy and turmoil. So _many_ people couldn't just take a _suggestion_. Well, it was the loss of mundanes for not being blessed with the Inner... No, she couldn't do it, not right now. She was feeling too exhausted. "It was only a suggestion," she murmured. Several seconds passed... or it might have been a minute, she wasn't sure. "Is there anything more with which I can help you?"

"You're not looking well," the boy said, vague concern creeping into his voice. Oh, _now_ he felt concerned! "I - er - think I had better go." A pause. "Is there anything - um - which I can do for _you_ before I leave?"

"Just get out of my office!" she cried, the demand coming from somewhere deep within her, and he hastily complied, to tell from the sound of the door opening and shutting. That had been rather rude, she comprehended after a moment. She didn't care.

With a wave of her wand, her office door barred itself, and she arose to go find the nearest flat surface that wasn't her desk. She needed to have a lie-down, and do it quickly. The floor was looking more attractive by the moment.

* * *

Sybill suppressed a flinch as Harry Potter entered her office. It was most unreasonable, she knew - it hadn't been the _boy's_ fault she'd taken ill that day. Indifferent health was one of the many possible burdens of a Seer, and it seemed it was among her crosses to bear. (She adamantly denied, no matter what many false friends over the years had suggested, that it had to do with an occasional excess of sherry.)

"Mr. Potter," she said, forcing a certain air of friendliness as she peered at him. "How may I help you?" While she waited for a response, she attempted to divine it. Hmm... nervousness, shiftiness... girl trouble? Or perhaps trouble with a friend... Yes, that seemed about right...

"It's - well," he said, pulling out the chair so he could sit down, "you heard, of course, about this upcoming Halloween, and the Goblet of F-"

"Yes, _of course_ your name's going to come out of the Goblet! What else are you in here for?"

He stared at her, hand gripping the back of the chair. She blinked and touched her mouth. "I, ah," she said, licking her lips, "of course, I don't really - I don't know what came over me. My apologies. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately."

And yes, she _did_ blame him for that. _He_ was the one who put those horrid thoughts into her head about Voldemort. And her dreams in general had taken a turn for the perverse after that... She kept dreaming of a handsome young man reclining upon a table near where she, ahem, occasionally stashed a medicinal supply of spirits, a gleaming diadem upon his brow and a contemptuous smile upon his lips. It had bothered her so greatly that she'd not had the courage to go visit her, ah, medicine cabinet for the past few weeks... She'd have to take advantage of the next Hogsmeade visit, she was almost out of her office supplies...

"I was... I was just going to ask if you thought anything bad might happen to me," the boy said faintly. "Since, I mean, something bad _always_ seems to happen to me on Halloween."

"Well - I spoke over-hastily," she said, licking her lips and swallowing several times. Her throat itched. "I cannot be certain, of course... only the sight within can pierce the mists of..."

"How does it happen?" he said in a doleful voice. "I mean - I haven't even put my name in. Not intending to, either." The boy pushed his glasses up his nose and sighed. "How am I supposed to get past all the seventh-years, anyway? Aren't they loads more qualified?"

"I don't know," she said faintly. "Perhaps - that is to say, if you _do_ , you are a contestant during some other year. I spoke solely on impulse - intuition can be misleading. It may be that the true interpretation is..." Fumbling, she stared up at the ceiling in hopes that the true interpretation might come to her.

"No, I understand," he said, sounding very long-suffering indeed. He pushed the chair back into place. "That answers my question, I suppose. There's no getting out of it, I take it?"

No. Well, that is, she had to remember, there was always a way to avert future calamities, if one only... _No_. No matter how slim the chance, fate could always be shifted and... **_No._**

It must have shown on her face, because he only sighed and nodded. "I see. Thank you very much, Professor Trelawney. I'll go... prepare, I guess." As he left, she thought him mutter, "Another bloody year of mortal peril, just my luck..."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I could go two ways with this: either he consults with her enough throughout the year that he realizes something will go seriously awry with the Third Task, and prepares enough to derail it, or he stays on fourth-year rails (despite efforts to avoid them), but acquires enough scattered benefits to amount to a very different fifth year. (Advice to study Occlumency and undergo general mind-sharpening training so he can get a better handle on any other "visions" when they occur, an early introduction to Luna Lovegood as a bright and interested student of Divination [ _not_ Seer!Luna], and other such random benefits.)

And then I'd have to balance Trelawney being competent enough to be relevant while not being competent enough to trivialize plot progression. On that note...

* * *

 **Omake: Competent?Trelawney**

 _"Let me see that, my dear," she said reprovingly to Ron, sweeping over and snatching Harry's cup from him. Everyone went quiet to watch._

"Ring, locket, cup, diadem, snake," she said, flicking hard at Harry's scar. He jerked back. "You've already gotten the book. And... my, my, you Potters have a _type_ , don't you? You may well ask whether I'm serious, and you're right, I'm not. But at least I'm not a rat. Beware the pink toad."

She handed the cup back to Harry, and he stared at her.

"But... Professor, what's any of that _mean?_ "

She shrugged. "If it were possible to work that out, the wardens of the Hall of Prophecy would have to go find new jobs."

* * *

 **Omake: Vigilante!Trelawney**

"Sybill Trelawney, you stand accused of the death of twenty-seven innocent wizards and witches. How do you plead?"

"Guilty as sin," she responded calmly. "The vast majority of my victims were Marked Death Eaters, as you well know from their own trials. I foresaw that any of them, if left alive, would eventually enter circumstances under which they would resurrect the Dark Lord and bring about the deaths of countless innocents, to say nothing of the crimes which they would personally commit. I acted to stop that immediately.

"Likewise, Dolores Umbridge would eventually attain a position of significant power, though the specific nature of that position varied, and would use it to indulge in widespread torture of the powerless. By the time she would be ousted, many would be scarred for life in both body and soul; in the worst-case scenarios, a few would either die from their injuries or be driven to take their own lives. I chose to end her reign before it began.

"It would be tedious to go through the whole list, but the sole death I regret is that of Rubeus Hagrid. A true gentle giant, he would never have intentionally harmed anyone. However, he lacked the mental capacity to understand the danger posed to ordinary wizards and witches by the creatures he so adored, and - one way or another - that love and naivete would lead to an incident resulting in multiple fatalities and more maimed for life. In the darkest paths, the _direct_ body count reached into the hundreds, and the ensuing collapse of the Statute of Secrecy would make that pale by comparison. Ultimately, as with all the others, his death was an acceptable price to buy back the lives that would be lost if I were to stand aside and allow fate to take its uninterrupted course."

"You realize that the word of a Seer alone is not proof, and - even if it were - our august nation does not punish citizens for crimes which _might_ occur. I presume you Saw, if you're the great Seer you portray, you foresaw that you would be receiving the Kiss?"

"Which is why, before being captured, I ingested an undetectable, delayed-action poison. It should be taking effect around-"

As she collapsed on the spot, the judge let out an unprintable string of obscenities.

* * *

 **Omake: Seer!Luna**

DUMBLEDORE'S TORRID AFFAIR WITH GRINDELWALD!

GIANT PINK TOAD TO BECOME NEXT HEADMISTRESS!

POTTER SECRETLY SOUL-BONDED TO DARK LORD!

DOES A MAN-EATING SPIDER COLONY LIVE NEAR _YOUR_ SCHOOL?

Hermione tossed aside the magazine she'd found discarded in a deserted corridor. As a terribly sensible and high-minded girl, she knew it was all absolutely preposterous, and she wasn't going to give such nonsense a moment more of her time.

* * *

 **Omake: Perhaps there's a reason Seers are always obscure**

"Will I wed the prince?"

The witch squinted at her. "No, you will marry a fat, stinking drunk who cheats on you with all the maids. On the bright side," she said apologetically, "you'll be cuckolding him too - mostly with that cute tow-headed boy you hang around all the time. Something starting with a J..."

"That's her _brother!_ " Melara Heatherspoon shrieked. Cersei turned bright red and tugged on her arm.

"Let's leave this old fraud, Melara. I knew magic was just a bunch of lies for babies."


End file.
